Human Life at Pandora after the Eviction
by AB Norway
Summary: Stories from the six years between the 1st and 2nd Human - Na'vi War. Rated T because there are some scenes that might be disturbing for some.
1. Bamboozled but still Avatar Creation

**Bamboozled – but still Avatar Creaton  
**Festivities were over at the recently renamed Augustine Research Station. "Hell's Gate" was no more. Jake was officially, permanently and undoubtedly a na'vi now, and he was the chieftain of the Omatikaya clan too. Norm knew that he was going to have many a lesson with him about what that entailed, and so were others of the leading people of the clan. He had a lot to learn and knew it.

The eight month mark since the conquest of and subsequent renaming of Hell's Gate had gone by. Since The Great Battle had taken place, ending with human eviction save for those few who had made themselves deserve it, since Tsu'tey was mortally wounded while valiantly fighting aboard the Valkyrie space ferry. He had then been olo'eyktan for barely a week and with him gone there was just one qualified candidate left, Jake. So Jake took over this part with a heavy and throbbing heart. With such responsibility on his shoulders the permanent transfer to his Na'vi body was a foregone decision as soon as it was offered by Mo'at.

First of all a new home tree was to be located. Luckily they didn't have to search very far, they were able to hang on to their clan territory. Jake had gone through the classical Na'vi training in culture and jungle abilities, Neytiri and Mo'at gave him lessons in the art of "chieftaining" , and many an able master or mistress of crafts joined in too.

Jake soon set about seeing to that any new human intrusion was to be made as hard to succeed as possible. First of all he made sure to convince twelve of the thirteen clans that had taken part in the Great Battle alongside the Omatikaya that the wartime alliance against the tawtute had to be made into a permanent affair – he didn't succeed with the Western Islander clan. But on the other hand he had great success with attracting a good many other Namana mainlander clans to the Federation he was building up.

He spent much time with building up institutions to facilitate the defence. Schools for first warrior leaders, in time for other crafts too, and eventually the Royal Academy was founded for training coming ay'tsahik and ay'olo'eyktan. And along with Jeff he drilled the warrior school cadets relentlessly. Many clans who never came to be invited to the federation then asked to be admitted to it, wishing to arrange education for their teenagers – they understood the advantages to it. The Federation by and by became so big that it could be subdivided in tribes of between eight and sixteen clans each, as an intermediate level between the clan and the federation.

* * *

Norm and Max had their days crammed at Augustine too. They had thrown out all the leadership and most of the able people at the station, so to survive they would have to make do with what they had – and probably recruit a few from the ISVs due to come in the coming few years?

There was a very important affair to be handled, in the rather close future. About nine months after the Great Battle, i.e. in about a month's time, there would be an ISV arriving. That arrival was both a threat and a necessity. On the one hand it would carry precious spare parts for the appliances that kept the station and themselves alive, plus materials vital for spare parts they after all could make, not available at any known location at Pandora, like platinum metal. And there might be honest scientists who could be allowed to stay on for their research projects, if they were willing to abide with rules. On the other hand there was a danger that RDA soldiers could come bursting out of the cargo hold, guns ablaze and with reconquest of the base in their intentions. So they offered to buy spare parts and materials from the ISVs with unobtanium ore on stock, dug out before the Great battle in other words, on hand for use as barter merchandise.

Max had two pressing concerns for his own work. In the aftermath of the coup when they captured "Hell's Gate" Trudy had been brought in, barely hanging on to dear life – she had third degree burns on much of her legs and lower torso. Her concussion and broken ribs were not injuries to speak about in comparision with those burns. And Max had salvaged the avatar body of Norm, its life couldn't be saved but Max managed to extract its DNA. He implanted it into ten fertilized na'vi egg cells (zygotes) and one of them made it past the critical phase.

Well, Norm was removed from the equation. But Max knew well that if he couldn't somehow manage to create two avatars from scratch – for himself and for Trudy – they were doomed in six years or so, whether by asphyxiation at Pandora or execution at Earth. The problem nagged him insistingly.

Norm meanwhile lined the people left at Augustine up, noted their names, academic or practical abilities and their research projects, and had a discussion with them about tasks they were to take care of with the upkeep. Some tasks had to be a communal chore, everyone joining in. Like floor washing and garbage undertaking. Others could be left to specialists. He struck up a list at the mess wall, detailing tasks, duties, hobbies and responsibilities of everybody at the staff. Newcoming members arriving at coming ISVs would be appended at the bottom of the list as they came, one by one.

Comments were soon hand-scribbled on the poster presenting this list, like at Gill: "Don't you dare to call me 'The gill'!" and at Gumm: "aka. 'The gun'…", or at Nick: "Leisure passion: Women, how about a 'ten-some'?" That one was most certainly not written by himself…

In short, everyone had their jobs cut out for them. They all had busy times with keeping the station going, even if much of it was closed down. Hal often needed to build mechanical systems from scratch by cannibalizing gadgets from the machinery no longer needed. Apart from letting people finish their various scientific research projects, after all the reason for being at Pandora, everyone had to take their turns with various chores in the upkeep of the station. Everyone had their turn with unpleasant chores like ventilation shaft scrubbing, toilet cleaning, garbage incineration etc. Large parts of the complex was dismantled, the construction materials feeding the appetite of the stereolitographic plant, creating parts for keeping the remaining complex up and going.

Some of the staff were frequently absent from the station, Norm together with Jake planning the political and society reforms of Na'vi society to empower resistance to new RDA intrusions, Jeff together with Jake organizing and training warriors in how to tackle Sky People warriors and their war machines, Deke and Ernie were often absent on food gathering expeditions for long time on end – Bobbie had found out how to detoxify food by grinding it and then baking it with a special plant juice. Jake came visiting them from time to time and got a taste of this food, he declared that to the tongue he had acquired the untreated food was far superior, but if they thus could make the food from Ella's greenhouse last longer then why not. If they could use the unobtanium mineral they had on stock to barter for other essentials than food supply then all the better.

Trudy's recuperation took a long time, and an annoying itch in the scars lingered on. She had barely awakened from her coma when Jake moved the Omatikaya clan to a new home tree, fittingly named "New Hometree" as opposed to "Old Hometree". She sent to him her sorry for not being able to help out with the moving operation. She conducted much of the decision making she was brought into from her sick bed. But after some seven months she managed to take to the air again, for short trips.

So at the time when Trudy had fully recuperated and didn't need a cane anymore, preparations for the advent of the first ISV after the Great Battle were in full swing. Autocannon batteries were rigged around the landing pad. Anti-air rocket batteries were primed and made ready for action. Jake would be bringing a strong war party, a kumpongu, to beef up the defences – the warriors needed little encouragement to demonstrate vigilance and battle-readiness for this occasion, and Jake had a perfect opportunity to invite warriors from a good many clans to demonstrate for them what real Sky People were – i.e. hammering the federation he was assembling even harder together. Angie was asked to see if she could produce some cargo manifesto of the ISV, the day after she proudly read: "They are bringing some supplies yes they are. Some food yes, but now that our own food production is in balance we can put that down the list of priorities, Norm. Some drawings of spare parts, give that to Hal and he'll make handsprings, the exo-pack maintenance unit shouldn't be in danger of having to close down now. And others. Ten scientists, three of them are bringing avatars of their own."

"Who are they? And what are they into?"

"Ummm. William Enoch Gehrken, archaeologist. Celia Ann Gehrken, palaeontologist. Probably husband and wife – or brother and sister may be. And Wayne Stuart Bell, microbiologist." Suddenly she made huge eyes and her jaw dropped. "But look at that – Max will gag with joy!" She immediately rose up and ran out of the room, Norm could discern from the sound of her running feet where the running steps stopped and a sliding door opened, that she had run into Max' lab.

Soon after Max came into the control central, and he glowed. "Norm! This is phantasmagoric news for me and Trudy! They are sending us an XGSS–set with the arriving ISV! Well, not a complete one, it is a set meant for rearing the lab rats of new genetic make-ups we keep here, out of cell cultures they send us. But with some building work of Todd and some of the computer savvy of Shawn – presto! Now we won't have to go back to Earth and hope for a lenient verdict!"

"Marvellous news, Max!"

* * *

So about a week short of nine months after the Great Battle Angie heard the message. "Hello ExtraSolar Colony 1, do you copy? 'Speed of Light' here. Hell's Gate, come in please."

The message for arriving ISVs, the next years to become customary, had been mainly written by Norm with inserts by Jake, digitalized by Shawn and sent up by Angie. It read like this: ...

"As You may know if You picked up the declaration we broadcasted, Pandora is sovereign territory at which no ISV is allowed to call with intention to establish any mining operation. This means that no technical or military landing will be tolerated, only scientists bringing their own avatars will be allowed down, we will then interview them to see whether they will be able to work and thrive under the regimen the Namana Land Confederation will impose on them. Give reply if You intend to land in peace to disembark your payload and passengers, and not risk being shot down by our defence systems. We the staff at the Augustine Research Station – mark the new name, please – are willing to purchase spare parts and other supplies You have brought for running the station, we offer to pay for these supplies with refined unobtanium ore we have stored. Reply Your acceptance of these demands if You wish to unload Your cargo and recharge the fuel of Your ISV."

The reply from ISV captain Philip MacAllister, read like this:

"Who the (rough expletive deleted) are you? What has happened at Hell's Gate? Where is manager Selfridge? Or colonel Quaritch? OK, we received your message, the content couldn't be clearer. Your reasons for staging your rebellion are in direct contradiction to anything our company has ever solemnly declared at home at Earth, making your story rather hard to believe. If the company is right, you should understand that you face a verdict for theft, company damage, not to mention massive murder. Anyhow, expect a retribution coming for you on a massive scale! A force well able to handle you is probably soon to be underway! And a stone age people able to successfully resist a major punitive expedition with all modern warfare technology and leadership techniques – stop dreaming!

We at this ISV will, however, not be those who are to exact retribution for this. We have only one company worth of soldiers on board, not nearly enough to stage a full invasion against opposition, and our fuel tanks will not take us all the way back home. And we need provisions for food, water and oxygen, and nitrogen for keeping the people in hibernation staying down. So your demands will be complied with. All technical items and other supplies on board will be delivered down to you, as requested, to be paid for with refined unobtanium ore as offered. We also have three scientists with avatars of their own on board who have indicated willingness to be landed at Pandora – hope you will receive them courteously?"

So four days afterwards the Valkyrie space ferry landed, without making any antics. Loading door went up and staff space seamen starting the process of loading and unloading, under watchful eyes of distrustful na¨vi warriors. Technical gadgets were delivered mostly as detailed construction plans on disc for their construction, one part at the time, to the stereolitographic plant where Hal was the lord. Hal had busy days with checking the validity and readability of the transferred data, and bringing in the more special cargo – such as metals not readily available at Pandora, like noble metals etc.

The three leaders met the three newcomers. Bill Gehrken was a muscular and healthy looking fellow, he saw Trudy's gaze and commented with a little glee: "I can see what is in your mind right now, I have seen those gazes before when my sister had girl friends visiting. Yes, I sometimes posed as a model during my study days, thus I paid my study mortgages." Celia Gehrken wouldn't do anything bad to a magazine front page either, she deftly placed herself in front of her husband. With a big glee she declared: "I hereby declare this trophy piece of husband the property of Celia! So please Trudy and all the other women at the station, keep your eyes to yourself!" And there was Wayne Stuart Bell, a small and well matured guy with a flowing mane of white hair and a fat, white moustache, and a meek and bleating voice – he could have been taken for a resurrection of Albert Einstein himself, he made an impression like a shy and kind oldish man.

They were all brought into the station and they all walked to the main conference room. A movie was shown, presenting gruesome images of mindless vandalism, indiscriminate killing and on the whole revolting brutality. Trudy narrated and affirmed: "Sickening to watch as this has been, I assure you that you have seen but a small part of it and certainly not the worst crimes, only what we could document on movie! I saw horrid scenes in the Great Battle – I should know because I took part in it! For you benefit I can show you my personal memento of the battle…" And she pulled up the leg on her trouser and displayed a disfiguring scar on her leg from burning gasoline. "It always itches when I am to go to sleep!"

Max took over the word. "Now you have seen why human kind in general has been banished from this world. Quod erat demonstrandum. That we are allowed to stay here is because we took part in the battle and risked our lives in it, and with the benevolence of Jake Sully, the SecOps avatar operative took charge of the Na'vi forces. He is chieftain of the Omatikaya clan now and the first among equals of many other clans too. But the minute we are given message that we are unwanted here, we'll know that we are off with the first departing ISV. So we better abide with rules for living here, given us by the Omatikayas. We have prepared a manual about this, Norm is now handing it out to you. Read it with care, if you can't accept the rules listed in this manual – all of them – then Pandora very simply isn't the right research location for you."

The relay baton went to Norm: "An important item in the manual is a demand and an offer in return for it. We demand your complete loyalty against RDA or any other intruder from Earth. We present you a deadline for your research project, five years. Any ISV arriving after that will be arriving after the RDA leadership have had time to plan and send out some reconquering expedition, so all ISV arriving after that one should be regarded with utmost distrust. Then there will be no more spare parts arriving from Earth, and we'll probably be out of ore to pay for it too. That means that this base will after that date slowly but inexorably revert to the jungle, so this station will then necessarily be abandoned. And without life-sustaining technology humans can't survive in this environment.

However, it will then be possible to exchange your human body for your avatar body and live as na'vi for the rest of your natural life. This is a privilege graciously extended you by the Omatikaya clan, provided you behave with respect to nature and culture, and keep unquestionably loyal against the RDA or whoever. But if you decide to go for that instead of returning with some ISV before that, do realize that living a natural life, of the kind humans really were designed for by the Creator, isn't like present life at Earth. There are no shops among the na'vi, no salary for what you do, no groceries and few luxuries for sale and no entertainment like movies etc. If you feel like such a life then think twice, there will be no reconsidering after the last space ferry has taken off."

So Max gave them a parting greeting: "See you after breakfast at 8.00 tomorrow, then you can give me your acceptance of the rules. If you can't accept them then the space ferry is still out there by then and it will be able to bring you back to Earth. Now you can go and have a dinner and then some reading and pondering time. Bon apetite!"

* * *

After breakfast the next day the two trios reconvened in the meeting room. Max put them the central question: "Now what will it be? We take it alphabetically and start at B for Bell. Well Wayne?"

"I was a doctor for some years before I started a study in microbiological life in alien environments. The oath I gave when I passed my final medical exam is still heavy on my shoulders, good old Hippocrates really knew how to formulate a solemn declaration of responsibility! I promise to make my living according to those rules – but assist and advise me if I should unwittingly break some rule!"

"Yes you are in, Wayne. And you two, Gehrken?"

"Can't say I like the restrictions on digging around. How can we learn to know the past if we can't dig into remains from Pandora's prehistory?"

Celia inweighed: "I can see your point Bill and I sympathize with it but I can't just outright buy it either. We wouldn't be able to pull down a skyscraper or two just to study the history of New York either. Surely we'll be able to find at least some locations for some digs."

"OK, crossing my fingers. But if no digs are possible, or digging strictly forbidden at especially interesting locations, then I don't see any way I can do useful research here."

"Neither can I, but why so pessimistic Bill? Cross your fingers and hope for the best."

Max cleared his throat and asked the central question: "Well, we can give it a try. So you will try to make your project under rules presented you?"

Bill said "yes" – with a concerned expression in his face. Max thought to himself that there might be some clashes in the coming between those two and Pandoran realities. And he was going to see that in the future…

* * *

Days passed. The newcomers were settled in at the station, Wayne took on service as Max' laboratory assistant at the avatar lab, while Bill and Celia were assigned housekeeper Ewa for house maintenance. Essential materials were brought down from orbit and unobtanium was brought up. Technical design plans and user manuals for various equipment was delivered the crew at the station, this and nitrogen for the cryotank maintenance; oxygen for ISV crew breathing, food and water supplies for ISV crew consumption at the return trip was part of equation. Owen calculated that with all needs covered for both parts there would still be sufficient ore left for making business with the coming ISVs too. After bringing the goods into the warehouse the staff at the station started with checking the merchandise. Especially the technical designs were complicated affairs to check, with lots of calculations that had to be put into force, software needing to be installed, finetunings for the stereolitographic plant… So finalizing the merchandise check took time.

Only last day of ISV weeklong presence at the orbital of Pandora Hal made the startling discovery...

He opened up the main file in the design plans of the XGSS set and went through the implementation plan item by item with his simulating computer program. It was when he joined the medication modul with the nutrition modul it happened: A photograph from an XGSS lab flashed up on the monitor, with a text below the image reading: "UP YOURS, TRAITORS AGAINST HUMANITY!" And then the program aborted and the whole design plan self-destructed. Hal immediately ran to the mess hall, where captain MacAllister was just sitting and having a talk with Max. "Max! The design plans for the XGSS set is a hoax! Just a photograph of the real thing! And there must have been a worm or something in the plan document, it self-destroyed when I gave a special command given."

The jovial face of Max disappeared in a flash. "This so, captain? In so case, unload part of the cargo we have given you as payment for it! We won't pay one single dime for sabotaged merchandise! You have been given a specified payment list."

Captain MacAllister doffed his head and presented a sly little smirk. "We at ISV 'Light Speed' have decided that we won't abet criminals like you with giving you some gadget of your desire! So we'll unload that last consignment of ore since I guess that you won't let us keep it. I'll see you in some years may be, perhaps it will one day be me who'll bring you and your accomplices back to a trial at Earth? Bye, I better go and manage the unloading."

Max shook his head in disbelief and sat down at a table, and buried his face in his hands. "And I had so huge hopes… It is awfully painful to see so high hopes dashed this brutally!" But then he felt a hand on his shoulder and the meek, mild voice of kind, old Wayne: "Cheer up, Max! Yesterday I saw a paper on the scientific files of yours, a report on zygote cell division during very early na'vi pregnancy. The thought struck me that it might be possible to peel those starting cells apart, so that we can have a mass of cells for analyzing, to look for genetic abnormalities. May be we can circumvent the need for an XGSS set, we can so to say make our own set – rough and primitive yes but it will only need to work twice, for you and for Trudy… What about that?"

Max stood up with a rush and glared at Wayne with huge eyes. "Really?"

Wayne made a modest little smile and replied: "I can't guarantee a good result but why not try it out?"

Max sat down and sighed: "This is really good news. I ask you to go ahead with this research without slightest delay, it is personal for Trudy and me you see! But we better not make the ISV guys aware of it – why should they know what we are cooking?"

A white blood cell was drawn from a na'vi blood sample and one likewise from Max and Trudy each, the two DNA strands were spliced, over and over again. And those resulting cell globs were then tested for all known abnormalities, quite a few were detected but in the end two zygotes were located with no evident abnormality. These two were then injected into fertilized na'vi egg cells (i.e. zygotes) and put to growth. Max and Trudy could with great satisfaction about half a year after the departure of ISV "Light Speed" see the start to their new selves being put into the growing tank. All the rest of the staff at Augustine was present at the occasion too and congratulations came in thick. Congratulations came in from the New Home Tree too.

* * *

Max had most of his workdays in the avatar lab so he had occasion to watch his own avatar growing. So he was very often sitting and looking at it – and one day a couple months later he noticed something...

"Wayne, could you come in please and have a look at my avatar? I think I am seeing something about its anatomy. Take a look and tell me what you think – the same as me?"

"It sure looks like… I could check the hormone content in its blood." A couple of hours later he came out from the hormone analyzer and gave the stunning verdict: "Max, you were right in your hunch. Your avatar is a female na'vi! I must have confused the na'vi gender chromosomes – they look almost exactly the same! I am so very sorry Max!"

Max had to sit down in his shock before he even had heard Wayne out, and he muttered to himself: "I in high heels – dressed in a sari – married with a man and with many – many – many kids…" But then Trudy came to him and cheered him up. "Oh break it Max! Na'vi people don't walk in shoes at all and the females certainly don't wear voluminous saris – you are not in India now! And if you don't feel like having small ones then it most certainly isn't necessary. It is for you to decide and nobody else. You can start with getting used to being named Maxine… And as a female myself I can reassure you, life as a woman isn't too bad at all!"

Words soon got out and after a few smirks everyone accepted the news as a fact. Making it simpler for Max to come to terms with it too.


	2. Egghead of Eggheads

**Disclaimer**

I am not the owner of the persons of this story met with in the movie and I never will be, I am not making any money whatsoever from this little story and I will never expect to do it either. If anyone feel like building further stories on persons, localities and events here created then they can feel free to do it – provided only that they try to stay in the given pre-histories, given personalities etc., and keep from turning their stories into adult stories. R&R's are welcome.

**

* * *

Egghead of Eggheads**

Max and Norm took a glance at the calendar up at the wall. They had checked day after day until a day marked with red ink was drawing close. They both knew what the marking meant.

"It is time." Max said.

"It sure is. We better remind Jake about it. He is living without calendar after all, he is getting used to measure time in seasons not days now." Norm concurred.

So Jake was notified in the afternoon the same day. When he saw the message he gave a sigh, knowing fully well what it meant. He walked over to Neytiri who was sitting and mending her baby sling that little Thomas had bitten a big tear in. Mo'at had just three days before been told that he would one day in the not so distant future get a new brother or sister. And now Jake said: "Day has come for a new ISV arrival. Would you like to join me with receiving it?"

Neytiri gave a little hiss of exasperation but he was never in doubt that she would never allow him to face that little risk of facing a new Valkyrie space ferry all alone. It would hardly be much of a risk but there still was a small risk that RDA marines would burst out of the cargo door with guns ablazing. So a strong kumpongu of na'vi warriors were always present at those dates, few of them visible but hiding in the grass and trees, and warriors riding on ikrans with machine gun armed passengers were waiting in the trees. And all defensive systems at the Augustine Research Station would be at red alert and ready to give fire if the order went out. Angie at the radio alert watch would now double as flight controller and she always made the ISV crews perfectly well aware of that fundamental facts down at Pandora had changed during their flight time from Earth.

So at the designated time the message was displayed at the monitor:

"ISV Super Nova is calling flight controller on watch at Hell's Gate. Come in please."

Angie now started playing the pre-recorded information announcement:

"As You may know if You picked up the declaration we broadcasted, Pandora is sovereign territory at which no ISV is allowed to call with intention to establish any mining operation. This means that no technical or military landing will be tolerated, only scientists bringing their own avatars will be allowed down, we will then interview them to see whether they will be able to work and thrive under the regimen the Namana Land Confederation will impose on them. Give reply if You intend to land in peace to disembark your payload and passengers, and not risk being shot down by our defence systems. We the staff at the Augustine Research Station – mark the new name, please – are willing to purchase spare parts and other supplies You have brought for running the station, we offer to pay for these supplies with refined unobtanium ore we have stored. Reply Your acceptance of these demands if You wish to unload Your cargo and recharge the fuel of Your ISV."

None of the three ISVs that had come calling earlier had made any attempt at violating the strictures imposed on them, neither did ISV Super Nova – indeed the commander obeyed flight instructions with so exceeding zeal that Jake started suspecting foul play. The Valkyrie landed in the dusk, only a single scientist disembarked and walked to the barrack building. It was a small but very stout woman, she named herself Mathilda Cummings and gave her research field as astronomy. "I intend to do some close-up observations of the three stars Alpha Centauri A, B and C. But now I am tired after my voyage, I intend to retire for the night if I may." And she did, leaving Norm to postpone the interview for tomorrow.

Towards the evening Trudy stood in the courtyard of the station and watched the space ferry crew offload the supplies they had brought and load the ore they had received as payment for them. Trudy remarked the haste the crew worked with, far into the dark. When finally the loading job was done the time was something like three AM and the crew boarded the space ferry – why, estimated time of departure wasn't until one PM tomorrow?

The skipper came over to her and handed her an envelope he asked her to give to Max when he woke in the morning. And then he boarded the space ferry too – no, he RAN aboard! Leaving a perplexed Trudy behind in the night.

The cargo door was closed and suddenly the engines ignited. Trudy screamed her protest and fired a warning shot but the shuttle crew took no notice. Inside the flight control room Angie yelled into the mic: "Valkyrie 2, You are NOT, I repeat NOT cleared for take off! Back to launch pad dammit! You read me, bastards! Put 'er back down NOW!" But the crew ignored her protests and the Valkyrie took off and was airborne. Max and Norm came running but they couldn't engage the anti-aircraft rockets in time – they had been switched off as soon as it was clear that the Valkyrie had no hostile intentions. Everybody had been fearing a Valkyrie arriving with evil intentions, nobody had thought about stopping an escaping space ferry. When the rockets had been engaged a deafening sonic boom was heard as the Valkyrie left, the space ferry was out of range for the rockets.

A flabbergasted station crew stood at the station launchpad. Trudy picked up the letter she had dropped during the mayhem and gave it to Max like the skipper had told her. Max opened it and he read:

"To mr. Max Patel and His Excellency Jacob Anderson Sully, chieftain of the Omatikaya clan!

We the crew at ISV Super Nova have had the very dubious joy of bringing miss Mathilda Cummings from Earth to Pandora. Actually she has been a royal pain in the neck every moment she has been out of hibernation!

She has social IQ closer to zero than I ever imagined possible. They say that women use to have a social intelligence above most men – here is a glaring exception! She is a hog at the meal servings, only grudgingly accepting that she can't exceed her rations without starving the rest of us. She has drowned us with boasting about her powerful relations, impressingly successful study, her meritorious sponsors at the college… She seems to think that academic funds are bottomless wells of cash for her studies…

She insisted on astronomic measurements even when we needed to calibrate navigation instruments for the approach to Pandora, putting us all at risk for a navigation error that would have sent us all hurtling down into the atmosphere of Polyphemus.

She has stridently insisted on 19th century gentlemanlike manners even in the cramped and mostly male environment aboard an ISV. By Jove, this has been a space flight by a space navy crew, not a picnic at a nobleman's manor! But – she has never made any attempt at behaving ladylike herself towards us in the crew!

I hope with all my sincerity that You will forgive us our haste with taking off from this space port, we had a secret council aboard ISV Super Nova and we decided to get rid of her any way we could – and we simply couldn't 'space walk' her. So if You will do us a favour then please do to this hyper-spoiled brat what her parents ought to have done long ago! You will earn the eternal gratitude of this little ISV commander, I will certainly plead in Your favour should the company come up with some sleazy trick!

Your most grateful,  
Captain Percy Robbins  
Commander of ISV Super Nova"

"What on all of Pandora are we going to do with this?" Max asked in bewilderment.

Norm responded: "We need to tell Jake as soon as he is awake in the morning. He and the other Omatikaya leaders are good at jacking down overblown egos, do you remember how Mo'at blew away the hubris of the Gehrken couple? Granted, this is a more serious case but we have to try."

Jake had returned to New Hometree in the evening after the Valkyrie had landed. He had seen that short, fat scientist who walked into the barrack, and he had pointed her out to Neytiri: "I don't think you have ever before seen a really fat person, my dear. Kim Chae Tai is stout but that woman over there is in a league of her own! If she is as thick-headed as she looks like she will probably be sent right back to the ISV tomorrow, Max and Norm will see to that."

Neytiri commented: "You are right, I never before saw any human like her! She certainly looks odd and unhealthy."

Back at New Hometree there were many things to do. Hunting parties gave reports, gatherers told him about a patch of knolls discovered, etc. Life returned to normal affairs quickly.

But in the early morning day after, shortly after Jake had awakened, Max called him through the radio with news: "We have a new case of goofy scientist who is in serious need of a wake-up call. This Mathilda Cummings was simply dumped here by the ISV crew, they simply took off and fled from Pandora rather than giving us a chance with sending her back up, and the ISV have not responded to our calls for coming down to bring her back up either. Seems like they want us to simply bring her up like a child."

Norm came in: "We have seen her and my goodness, she is among the most befuddled scientists I ever saw, Jake. Think about some scientist as pigheaded as Quaritch, multiply this with a brain as blindly idealistic and out of touch with reality as the Gehrken couple you may remember, to the power of a childish spoiled brat. And add to this a simply repellent look, and you have miss Cummings. We will give her our standard crash course given to all new avatar drivers, and in the strong likelihood that this will fail to convince her to the superiority of the way of the People we'll hope you will be able to startle her into her right mind, could you come to take care of her in the afternoon? PLEASE!"

"I will see what WE can do about this." Jake turned to Neytiri: "That fat scientist we saw yesterday, do you remember her?"

"Yes I do."

"Turns out that she is a narrow-minded, stubborn and human blinded one, and she must have been spoiled rotten by too indulging parents. The ISV crew must have been so seriously pissed with her that they dumped her down to us and fled rather than taking her up again. It will be up to us to teach her the manners of behaving, the wisdom of seeing, the patience of knowing when it is time and when not. I think I have an idea how it can be done. Do you remember Bill and Celia Gehrken?"

Neytiri closed her eyes and they sprang out from her memory: A good-looking and athletic man and his equally sporty looking wife – who were totally immune to understanding Na'vi sensibilities. They could never accept that even though their sciences – archaeology and paleontology – needed lots of digging it was still not OK to just hack into any other hillside. A tree shouldn't be felled just because there MIGHT be something interesting in the ground below it. After a dig into an old graveyard they were brought to the presence of Mo'at who gave them a flaying speech, the day after Max gave Jake the news that they had decided to return back to Earth with the ISV due in a month or so. Everyone were relieved, a crisis had been averted.

"I am off to explain this to mother and listen to her advices. May be we can make her teach herself to see like I did." Jake said. And he added: "And then I will assemble a team to demonstrate for her some things the efficient way."

Neytiri mused: "A team? Are you going to play her some jokes and tricks, ma'Jake?"

Jake gave a curt answer: "I do have plans. In case the crash course of Norm and Max doesn't work I have thought about not one but two ways of getting through to her. You'll see, I think "

The A star had risen and a new day had started. The breakfast signal had been sounded and the station crew had eaten their fill and had gone to their tasks or studies. Then only, when most of the others had left, came a rotund woman waddling down at the mess hall and demanded her breakfast with a high-pitched voice.

Cook Vytautas came to the counter and informed her that breakfast time was out. "But I came down from space yesterday and out of hibernation just two days ago, I am hungry! So get me some – straight away!" The cook gave her an exasperated shrug and put a tray with a standard breakfast meal in front of her and she gobbled it down – to the last crumb of the second serving!

Max and Norm had then been standing in the door to the mess hall for some time. When she chewed the last of the crumbs they took action. Norm took the word: "Good morning, miss Cummings! We have made ready Your avatar, when we have checked that this is working all right You will be given a crash course in conditions at Pandora. For the success of Your study program there are certain rules You will need to know and follow."

"Can't say I think I need any lecture on that, I read a whole book of them back at the avatar course at Earth. And I learned what I think I will need to know about the nature, flora, fauna, culture etc. of Pandora. I can remember those lessons well."

"Miss Cummings, now it is getting serious. Things have changed radically while You were on Your way here. RDA isn't in charge of a single thing any longer here at Pandora. You could say that we are like an embassy from Earth here, this isn't Hell's Gate any more but the Augustine Research Station, named after the late Grace Augustine, the author of those manuals you read. The reason for our existence is to do research not mining. Being so few as we are now after the eviction of the RDA staff, we all have to do our chores with the maintenance of our living here at the station. Since You are a newcomer You will have to earn Your grades in the daily chores. You are an astronomer right? We will see if Angie at the radio lab would need an assistant."

Max continued: "Working with Your chores may be a drudge to You but there is one even more important fact to life here at the Augustine Research Station. We live here at the grace and with the benevolence of the na'vi clans, when for any reason they want us out then we are off, all and everyone of us, with first ISV calling. It is an important item in the syllabus of Your crash course why this is so. We have sent back to Earth scientists who failed to abide with the rules before, that is far better than letting Your blood taste the neurotoxins of a na'vi arrow! And believe me, we here at the Augustine Research Station will NEVER allow a scientist who doesn't respect the rules set for his or her activity to jeopardize all the projects of those researchers who fit in well! We are simply unbelievably lucky that one former avatar driver is the mightiest of all the clan chieftains!"

Mathilda interrupted: "Are you telling me that serious science here at Pandora is working at the whim of monkeys in the forest? Are you quite in your right mind? And a human is bossing over a bunch of wild, fleabitten aliens? How could that be remotely possible?"

Norm concluded: "The essence of the crash course is stated by this good, old proverb: When in Rome, do as the Romans. Anything else is to risk your very life – and our too! The details of the rules – oh yes, it might be a good idea to call them laws – might seem arcane and cumbersome, the reasoning behind them is often crammed with funny superstitions and obscure traditions, and they are enforced with a strict and ruthless hand. But the result of them is absolutely undeniable: They, and the na'vi ability to connect with all of Pandoran nature, are what have always kept Pandora from turning into an ecosystem gone haywire like Earth. And hopefully they always will."

Max sat down right beside her and stared her right into her eyes, and he said with a stern voice: "You asked whether scientists here nowadays are working by the goodwill of the local na'vis. And the answer to that question is a clear and unequivocal YES, that is exactly what we are saying, ma'am! Only that the na'vi people are neither wild nor are they monkeys and they are not very fleabitten either. They are smart people, I do sometimes think that they are smarter than us humans since they have avoided ruining their ecosystem. In the afternoon You will come to discover so yourself! You will meet him in person in the afternoon, after the end of Your crash course."

* * *

Mathilda sat and watched a gruesome movie, showing massacres and other awful depredations, narrated by Norm. After the movie had been switched off and light had been turned on again, Normed turned towards her.

"Having seen what you have seen I guess that you are not wondering why we live under a regimen where the Na'vi always have the right of the way. I was the driver of one of those avatars battling the RDA goons to get them off this moon and you saw us marching them off the moon of Pandora. Believe me, I have seen events far worse than what you just have seen now, only that no camera was present at the time."

"But still it is too bad that scientific research is kept back just because a tree is blocking the way. Why not just move the graveyard that hindered Gehrken, for instance?"

"You are simply not getting it, I see? Local sensibilities must always recede in front of the all-conquering progress of science, huh? There is no use in explaining you rules if you don't accept the basic idea behind them. But I have an idea that Jake is going to pull a rabbit up from his top hat this afternoon… He is a creative mind when it comes to creating surprises."

It was lunchtime and all the avatar drivers present sat and ogled that woman who looked like she was trying to find out if she alone could manage to eat the whole lunch table served. In the end, when everyone had left the mess hall and she was just starting to eye the serving table to get herself yet another serving, Max interrupted her. "Now is time for second part of your crash course. Get into your avatar body and fill that one up with food too. Jake Sully will soon be here to take over and you had better be ready for it by then!"

Soon after she rose from the gurney and watched her new and blue body – an impressing sight to behold! She had never been so slim since she was a little girl! But Max was right, she was hungry still and she got herself a good serving from the fruits and the leaf wraps on the table – "nikt'chey" Norm called them. She heard him in the background murmuring something into the throat mic and then he came to her, cleared his throat and announced: "Jake will be here in a few minutes. Mind you, treat him like he will be expecting – he is after all a king of sorts now…"

Mathilda could see a flock of flying beasts above the tree tops in the distance. Coming closer she saw that they were banshees – and they appeared far larger than she had had the impression of reading the syllabus book at the avatar course. Coming even closer she could see that there were na'vi persons riding them. They landed and Mathilda saw that they were all females. One of them approached Norm. "Oel ngati kameie! Good to see you Neytiri!" Norm said, took a bow and touched his brow.

The na'vi female named Neytiri returned the greeting and turned to Mathilda. "You must be miss Ma'tilta Kummings. Welcome to our moon! Your name means in Na'vi 'My manners' – we hope you live up to that name! I have brought Peyral, Walala, Ninat and Maltalt, we shall have an all-girls chit-chat to give you tips about important things at Pandora – about wildlife, plants, history and traditions, while I will tell you the most important things about politics. He should be here soon – yes there he is!"

Mathilda looked up to the sky and saw a huge orange coloured flying beast, obviously a leonopteryx, or a "T-rex with wings" as a frightened soldier had once said. When it landed she saw a male riding it – was it possible? He dismounted and the awesome beast lunged for her and shrieked. That male then walked to her and said: "I am Jake Sully, formerly corporal of the US Marine Corps, now olo'eytkan of the Omatikaya clan. I have come here to direct Your education, miss Cummings, in what it takes to live and study here, and to help me I have brought my mate Neytiri and some friends of her – I presume that Norm and Max have educated You a little about things too."

They walked in under the awning that had been the na'vi school building of Grace's school. The six females sat down in a ring and started a talk, viewing it from the outside Jake thought that they only needed a jug of hot coffee, some bisquit or a gatto may be, and some handicrafts to make a human knitting club of girl friends… Jake had betted that female solidarity might be a good way of sugar-coating the bitter pill of unwelcome strictures to her activities.

Jake kept mostly in the background and only broke in from time to time to serve them some fruit and some water to drink. He could see that the friendly atmosphere caught the initially sceptical Mathilda in, she really got some food for thoughts. But as the day wore on they looked like getting stuck. Jake tapped Neytiri softly on her shoulder to catch her attention, she looked up, nodded and rose from the circle. They drew a little apart and then Jake inquired with a soft-spoken voice: "Is she finally understanding some important facts?"

Neytiri replied: "She is on her way but our arguments are obviously crashing with her fundamentally human mindset. As I expected, it took you three months and a love story for you to overcome this block, we don't have that luxury."

Jake countered: "You had something more too, my Neytiri, you had the Tree of Voices that night we mated too… I have had a talk with mother and she gave me her go ahead – it is a little risky but I think it should work well…"

Neytiri gave him a horrified look: "You are not thinking to… are you? It would risk her whole sanity!"

"I can't say that I can see any other way to break down that human mindset block quickly, we can't expect any na'vi male to romance her either. We will now pass to phase three in the Operation Mathilda Turnaround."

Mathilda was sitting and eating a nikt'chey right then. Jake caught her attention and told her: "Now you should eat to your belly's satisfaction, for the high point of your Pandora course is still ahead. You have heard some rules that apply here and why, I will now explain you why they are for the best no matter the necessity of science progress."

Mathilda ate yet another nikt'chey, drank a cup of water more and rose up. Jake decided to get going now. "All of you follow me please, Mathilda you can take place at my back on my toruk." She grudgingly did as she was told. Soon after they were airborne.

Neytiri knew where they were going but not the others, but the na'vi among them soon understood: the Tree of Souls. They landed and walked to the old tree. "An old friend of mine is right now sitting and waiting for us among these leaves, we can go in to meet her. Just walk in among the branches, Mathilda!" Jake said.

As they now walked in among the branches, Jake manouvered himself behind Mathilda. He took a branch and then quickly grabbed her queue and brought the small tendrils to the branch. The effect was immediate: Mathilda stopped cold in her tracks, glared with wide open eyes and gasped, and after some seconds she fell down on her knees.

Minutes passed, they could hear how her breath became laboured, they could see how sweat started to drip from her brow, how she started to sway and how her gaze became empty, finally tears started to run. Then she looked like coming out of her trance, her eyes fixed on her followers again and with a shivering movement she took her queue and broke the connection with the tree branch. And then she sank to the ground, completely exhausted. Her six followers then took her and brought her out and into the free.

About an hour later she had rested enough to start talking, and she sat up to look them into their eyes. "That is the beyond slightest doubt most awesome experience I ever had in my whole life time, and believe it or not but I have been through some events in my time – discovering a super nova in the Proximate Magellanic Cloud, being awarded my PhD degree, holding my little newborn brother in my arms when I was a little girl… But this experience got to take the prize!"

Jake and Neytiri spoke, almost in choir: "Tell us what you have seen!"

"When you Jake took my braid I felt irritated but I had no time to protest because then a lightning bolt struck my head! All of a sudden I was bathed in light and a mighty voice called at me, sounding like a wise old LADY: 'Mathilda Simona Cummings! Why have you come here?' I looked up but I couldn't see anyone."

"You have met with Eywa, Matilta!" Neytiri explained.

"I was astonished that this someone even knew my middle name I never told anyone of you! I had only one thing to do, I was down on my knees. 'I want to study those three stars up close, ma'am!' I stuttered.

Then I heard another female voice from just behind me: 'That is only partly true Mathilda, and all the truth is what is wanted. So carry on, my dear!' I turned around and I saw a middle aged human woman with long, curly red hair, wearing a lab coat."

"That can only be dr. Grace Augustine! She was killed by RDA bullets just before the Great Battle." Jake said.

"I simply watched her in numbed silence. She watched me with inquisitive eyes and said: 'If you can't talk for yourself I will have to do it for you. Mathilda, you are basically fleeing from your past life, admit it. And you are fleeing to a place as far away from your past life as possible, to put a clearest possible dividing line between the two lives. Isn't that correct? Think hard and speak up frankly now.'

I stared at her for a long time and finally nodded.

'Then do realize that what you are really fleeing from is the part of yourself you are secretly loathing – your big body, your boorish manners, your pampered background. But try as you might, you can never escape from yourself, not even in a new body. Your big shape will be back before you know it, your teammates at the Station will be shunning you like they did at Earth, and your research project will only stumble along like the project you finally had to give up at Earth because you couldn't get the funding you needed for it.

I'll tell you a secret you were not supposed to know, Mathilda. The reason that you were sent here to Pandora at all was very simply that scientists and administrators at your university decided to get rid of you by sending you here, and collected private money to sponsor your ticket. Your one-way ticket. They even bought you an avatar to make their offer even more tempting for you. That was how desperate they were at seeing your back for the last time.

What you really need is a fundamental change in your personality – starting today. Since there is a whole year until the next ISV arrival there is only one other realistically possible outcome. That one.'

And then she pointed behind her and I saw a na'vi looking person but with five fingered hands and dressed in shirt and trousers, lying face down on the ground with an arrow in the back. The mighty voice from above spoke: 'This might be You in some months time, Mathilda!'

I started crying and I SCREAMED in dismay: 'But how can I manage to turn myself around? What is the recipe – tell me please! PLEASE!'

Then the woman you named Grace put her hand on my shoulder and said: 'You should begin with heeding the rules given you by all people you meet along your way, ask whenever you are in the slightest doubt and take to heart all advices you get, whether clearly stated or implied. They are there for good reasons. You have now been given the most important lesson of your whole life. Your vital task for the coming time, by far more important to you than your research project, will be to learn to live and be happy with them. They will even make you a more sociable person among humans too. That is the end of this lesson, Mathilda. So you are now ready to leave this zone, you can now disconnect your braid from the tree branch. See you soon and hopefully under more benevolent auspices!'

I reached back into my neck, found my braid and loosened it from the branch – and here am I!"

* * *

Vytautas the cook could easily see that the headstrong avatar driver that had walked out together with Max and Norm after lunch had turned to a downcast and cowed one when she in the evening came back for supper. She took a seat along with Ella van Laare, the gardener at the hydroponic garden where parts of the proteins in the human nutrition at the station were produced. Van Laare was a confirmed, hardened and committed spinster, in her human body she even looked like an old-style prude. She had agreed to put Mathilda to work in the garden as her assistant and let her be her protégé otherwise. When she ventured outside Ella was her chaperone, and Matilda eagerly absorbed her advices. Jake was notified when she after some time started venturing outside on her own and had her shadowed, he could with satisfaction note that van Laare wasn't lying when she reported that Mathilda made good progress in her respect for the nature and traditions of Pandora. She finally made her successful body switch. In the limbo she briefly saw Grace Augustine with a broad grin of satisfaction.

And the day would come in the future when Mathilda would become a valiant defender of Pandora, when the Second Human – Na'vi War broke out. She really did end up with an arrow in her back, fired by a hostile clansman in the service of RDA. The difference was that the arrow wasn't a punishment for some serious crime, it was a heroic death she was remembered for. Am'tey, her mate, was left with two years old Tanya to care for, luckily for him there were many females who volunteered to lend him a hand with his motherless daughter.

Ella van Laare had shed her spinster lifestyle once she met a dashing Kilvan clansman during the war, the daughter she one day gave birth to was given the name Ma'tilta in honour of a woman who came to Pandora with a totally skewed way of life and thinking, but turned her life totally around for the infinitely better.


	3. A Brush with Hard Realities

A Brush with Hard Realities

Ernest Norbert Gumm was one of the original rebel avatars, so he had been allowed to stay among the eighteen other avatars when the rest of RDA was driven off after the Great Battle. He was a proud and free type, not quite himself until the research station was well out of sight. The Na'vi were impressed by how readily he absorbed their knowledge about the wildlife, and how quick a study he was when they explained him hunting rituals. Having been at ever so many long excursions in the few forests left at Earth, and in the moors and mountains, he wasn't easily tired but easily took to running, climbing etc. If on the other hand he for some reason couldn't go at his long hunting excursions, he became grumpy and mean-tempered – his nickname among humans "The Gun" was more than just a pun on his name.

He was xenozoologist by academic study, his research project was officially "classification and cataloguing of the Pandoran fauna", he was intended to be for the fauna of Pandora what Grace Augustine was for the flora. But he had a little pet project too: Might it be possible to domesticate some wild creature of Pandora, for the food supply of the base and later on the Na'vi too may be?

After careful studies for which animals he deemed suitable to try he settled at six kinds, approximate equivalents to domesticated animals at Earth. The sturmbeest could be a similar to bull and cow. Hexapede likewise for sheep and goat. Tapirus – for pigs. Jumprats might be suitable replacements for rabbits. And river serpents might work like salmon or carp. He made janitor Todd and Hal at the workshop set up some enclosures and ponds. He toyed with ideas of flying herders, using tamed viperwolves as herding dogs, but that would be projects for the future.

Jake and other na'vi were rather sceptic. "Ernie, you have studied these critters so you should know that they will not cut the mark as cattle etc.!" He retorted: "I understand what you are saying but I am looking for the exception to the rule, at least to create some exceptions. Remember, it took thousands of years to domesticate dogs and other animals at Earth, by systematic breeding it might turn out faster than that."

He knew that botanist Ella at the greenhouse was working with a similar project with plants from the flora, so he had a chat with her about her experiences. But to his dismay what she could tell him about her pet project was that it recently had come to its conclusion already, a fully negative one.

The banana fruit tree simply refused to grow from the seeds, no matter the soil, fertilizers, watering or other conditions she tried out. The swamp grass grew readily in hydroponic dams and she had hoped that it might form the rice of Pandora – but the grass had never produced any seeds. The tiz beets were easily grown and propagated – but the juice squeezed from the root was unusable for dressings and sauces. The brook fern root gave a red colour pigment from the root squeeze, a very costly pigment for the na'vi and easily turned into a whole array of other pigments by chemical reactions – but in the gardens it showed to be an intermediate host for a bug that gave the na'vi a heavy and lingering headache for a long time. The na'vi had long known about the connection between the colour and the headache – but to have it so eloquently proven, that was something else!

Finally she had hoped that the tama'l'a-liana the na'vi extracted fibers from for finer garment use would grow willingly. And it did – too willingly! With fertilizer and water it grew out of any bounds, also using the water and fertilizer stolen from the neighbouring flower beds… It very soon grew out of hand, climbing up the walls at the research station, so fast that she had little chance to curb it. When the shoots started to infest the intakes to the water and air purifiers and threatened to choke them Todd told her to put a period mark to her little botanical garden.

Not encouraging tips in other words… And "The Gun" was soon to get more reasons for his nickname.

The sturmbeest bulls of the herds were chronically hostile, he reasoned that they saw him as a competitor for the favours of the cows. He tried to solve the problem by removing the bulls, rendering the cows very skittish – until the most prominent of the cows started to grow horns and turned male. He found out that the sturmbeest cows had an ability to change sex in the absence of males. He could in other words not avoid the problem with aggressive bulls. No alternative but to give up the project of Pandoran cattle and let them loose.

The jumprats showed to be diggers as good as they were jumpers and climbers, and they were inveterate escape artists – they had a seemingly clairvoyant ability to detect places where the concrete was weak, they then urinated at the concrete to erode it and then gnawed through the now spongy and brittle concrete. Only cages with metal netting all around could contain them. Jake then gave him a dose of reality: "Na'vi are not in a thousand years going to gain any ability to produce steel wiring, so jumprats will forever be impossible for rearing!" He could only release them too – and came to regret that action later…

The hexapedes were known for their rapid breeding rate in the wild – but in captivity they simply didn't thrive and just pined away. So Jake killed the project with his uttering: "Then what is the use of domesticated ay'yerik who will not fatten and breed, when their wild cousins get both fat and numerous?" Out in the forest they ran.

And the tapirus? They showed to be not an animal for rearing in enclosed pens like pigs at Earth. Worse, the meat of the tame tapirus showed to be dry and tasteless, he simply couldn't find out which diet made their meat tasty and juicy. So Jake shook his head and told him: "For as long as there is lots of tapirus in the forest with good meat, there is bound to be no na'vi interest for this inferior meat."

Finally, what was it like in the river serpent ponds? Those fishes soon muddied the water and in no time they floated belly-up in the dirtied water. They were nomads by nature Ernie understood, moving to another part of the river once they had rooted up the bottom in their search for food. Herding an underwater animal around? Sounds like an ungainly affair…

The final end to the project came when some of the jumprats he had let loose from the cages turned their escape artistry into burglar artistry. They dug into the ground, put a hole in the foundation wall and invaded the greenhouse where much of the food for the staff of the station was grown by Ella and her assistant Tran Thi Dung, puncturing the air quality control of the station and making the staff need to wear exopacks indoors for more than a week until Todd and Hal had plugged the hole successfully. Once inside there they plundered the gardens, spread their feces all around and even gnawed over some vital electric cables. Todd, not normally a guy easily angered, now gave Ernie a comment red hot with anger: "May (him who should never be named) come and take that (deleted by the censor) project of yours!"

But Ernie's animal taming project had a useful side effect still. Years later, during the 2nd Human – Na'vi War, he put the experience he had gained with sturmbeests to good use, during the guerrilla war phase he repeatedly assembled herds of them, whipped the animals up to frenzy and then unleashed the stampede on the hapless RDA soldiers and their na'vi mercenaries. Afterwards the na'vi ikran-riders could hunt down the broken soldiers.


	4. Romantic Intrigues

Romantic Intrigues

Nicholas ("Nick") Dixon was the psychologist at the Augustine Research Station, and his wife Jenny the physician. They were known for their ability in their sciences – and for their turbulent marriage. Nick was an inveterate philanderer and Jenny often made her dismay about his habit known to him – and to everyone else at the station… Face slaps, loud quarrels and ugly gazes often took place in full public view. Sounds of screams and fighting was not unheard of through the walls to their apartment in the evenings, none of them hesitated with talking bad about the other for any ear willing to listen. But – they kept their differences strictly within their family, bad words from the rest of the staff was rejected out of hands.

Jenny was after one more public scandal asked why he behaved like he did. "For more than one reason I think. Firstly it is his career, I think he has unconsciously sought out a study where he could learn how to manipulate people he meet. He has gained a very sharp feeling for female primal desires and he knows how to play on them like a concert violinist. He is acutely aware of that many women are feeling satisfaction with the attention from a connaisseur of female look, he gives them what they want, the feeling that they are still attractive, young and fresh, yes even sexy... I grew up in a big family, with charming sisters and dashing brothers, I could so to say sit and view the game of Mars and Venus from both sides. And still he charmed me totally to my knees that time ten years ago at Earth.

Secondly and more fundamentally, I don't think he is really looking for love affairs, just conquests for the sake of his ego aggrandizement. You see, he was the runt of his litter, with four much older big sisters… At this station, with a very limited range of females to play on, his hunting instinct is striking the walls again and again. As a human casanova at Pandora he is a wild animal of prey in a cage, a caged animal of prey will mostly not bite hands that don't feed them. And that is probably part of the reason that women flock around him, big and scary animals catch lots of eyes at a zoo…"

That evening, however, he was sitting together with Bobbie at the pharmacy. Jenny had had an emergency call, a na'vi man had come down with a mysterious skin rash the healers had now idea about how to deal with. Bobbie had been target of his attention many times before, but still she melted completely down for his words and his glances. Suddenly she found her arms hanging on his back and she discovered his arms around her, and she felt her lips yearning for that oh so forbidden but my goodnes how alluring taste of his lips…

"Hello you two!" The voice of Norm at its shrillest pitch cut through the romantic situation like a cleaver. They both rose hurriedly up, red like tomatoes in their faces. "You stay with me now Nick! I'll have a word with you later, Bobbie."

Once Bobbie had left Norm gave Nick a gaze that could have cut through tempered steel. "You must not imagine that we at the station leadership are not aware of the game you're playing, Nick. You have been told before, in ever less ambiguous terms, to put your brakes on but still you carry on. And this you keep doing even if you are perfectly well aware of that your behaviour risks tearing rifts in the solidarity of the staff here, rifts that RDA will happily tug at if given half a chance – we know that they will very probably try to put their feet back on Pandora sooner or later. Since you still can't let it be I have begun thinking that there is something involuntary about it – that it isn't a bad manner but an involuntary behaviour… In any case, we will somehow have to put a stop to it, preferrably effective at once."

Nick tried a meek self defence: "But the station is brimming with willing seductresses…"

Norm interrupted him rudely. "That doesn't matter a thing. I'll put it bluntly to you now. Do you intend to remain at Pandora after the last scheduled ISV departure in five years? Then do know and realize how few secrets there are when queues are connected – you of course know this after your study psychological huh? 'Interconnectibility of mind-to-mind contact of na'vi people through nerve interlinking.' And should you still try, then do realize that na'vi punishment for marital unfaithfulness is prompt, remorseless and brutally strict. So tell me now, do you imagine a blue-skinned future for you? For if you do, you should either make your relationship with Jenny ended well before you go to the Tree of Souls, or learn to stay really faithful to her. If you can't or won't decide one of those options we will make your decision on your behalf and that will be a ticket back to Earth. One more pass like this more and that decision is likely no matter. Believe me, it is!"

Nick became pale almost like a dead man. "But… I…"

Norm slammed his hand on the table. "Enough chit-chatting between us two, you have now been given your very last warning. You should go and have a talk with your Jenny, she may like to have a word or two with us in the leadership and it will be a topic of discussion among us too. In any case you two, and most of all you Nick, have been given something to think about. Do think now!"

Nick sat alone left in the common room, feeling very mortified. He didn't sleep much that night and he had trouble concentrating on his work the day after too. When at last Jenny came back in the afternoon, she instantly saw at his demeanour that he had been given a brutal shock. "Now tell me what has taken place, my _dear_ husband? Have you finally succeeded in big-bellying one of the girls? Or what else?"

The gusty, redeyed and downcast Nick answered: "No but almost just as bad. Norm has threatened me with banishing me back to Earth if I don't either quit flirting or divorce you. He said, in no ambiguous terms, that I am with my behaviour a threat to the solidarity at the station and they have decided to deal with this threat."

Jenny gave him a gleeful look. "Oh my oh my, I have got me allies! Seriously speaking, until now I have always stuck by you but I am getting so very tired of it now and this seems to be my golden opportunity to make you the huge question. So I ask you now, answer me candidly – I will give you time to ponder your reply. Which of the alternatives do you go for? Or are your hunter's instincts simply so out of control that the choice will be taken FOR you not BY you?"

Nick was used to hear screams and face slaps from her but not a cold, measured front, toeing precisely the line of Norm, and her new manner frightened him. "Returning to Earth is absolutely not what I want, I simply forget anything and everything when those pink glances strike me."

Jenny kept adding blocks to the concrete wall she was building in front of him. "What you're saying is in other words that we should take a walk to Angie in the flight control and make her put you on the passenger list at the first ISV. Then do realize that I am NOT going to follow you back there, I feel perfectly good here at Pandora… minus all follies you're comitting."

Nick was getting desperate in his voice: "I don't want to react like I do but I do. How will it be possible for me to resist temptations? I am not interested in returning back to Earth either and, believe me or not, I have no intentions to divorce you either." At the end he sounded almost like begging her for pity.

But Jenny rejected his begging resolutely. "The world is full of people who have no alternative but to resist temptations. It dawns to me that you may need a rude shock, even heavier than the one Norm gave you yesterday. I'll go over to Trudy and have a girlie chat with her about what to do about it."

Nick panted in exhaustion when he put his period mark: "Yes do so, please. Norm said that he wants a talk with you too."

The day after there was a couple of hours with no patients scheduled so Jenny walked to the hangar and knocked at the door to the workshop. Nobody there, so she walked on to the command central, and there she found all three of them. She put her eyes on Trudy and opened her mouth, but Trudy interrupted her. "We can of course have a girls-only chat about this problem, afterwards, but I think this problem is so serious that we need to be informed all of us. So, what did Nick say when you came home?"

Jenny gave her answer: "He has very evidently been given a very heavy shock, but I am not convinced that he won't fall back to old, bad habits once the shock is wearing off. He needs a more fundamental experience still, I think. As for now, his small conquering raids at the battlefield of romance from time to time are what is putting colour in his life."

Max put in an idea: "Should we may be ask Jake for help? He can with a demand to be believed explain what the Omatikaya do with the chronically unfaithful."

Norm nodded thoughtfully. "It is at least worth a try."

Max and Trudy saw Norm take the radio telephone, call up Jake and then getting patched through. They could hear a soft spoken conversation, Jake sounded like discussing with Neytiri and Mo'at in next turn and talked with him again. Suddenly a hunch seemed to strike Norm in his head and a big glee showed up in his face. He told Jake – Max and Trudy could hear Jake's uproarious laughter right through the radio phone.

Once Norm had disconnected he gave them a raw sketch of his plan, and they sent an evil glance in the direction of Nick's office at the office wing of the building complex. The plan was refined in details and then they put Hal and Todd at work with readying the equipment they would need to put on this treatment they now were making ready for. Norm, Max and Trudy busied themselves with making the program for it ready.

Nick were at the New Hometree the day after, he had one of his regular patients to visit, a na'vi teenager girl who had lost all her family during the fall of Old Hometree and the Great Battle, she was by now was living with an uncle and aunt. She was of course consoled by her relations, by Mo'at and others but Nick was earning an increasing reputation for his ability with disturbed minds and was often invited to the New Hometree. Coming home to the station he saw that something was going on over at the edge of the forest, but he was so tired that he didn't care to go over to have a look.

So the day after that he was sitting and reading a scientific report just arrived from Earth when all of a sudden a black sack was drawn down over his head, immediately after his hands were put in handcuffs and then he was brought to standing. He had a distinct feeling that there were three or four men and a woman among his kidnappers – he could smell a ladies' perfume, but not seeing anything nor hearing much either he didn't say much himself either, once he tried to protest but no heed was given to what he said.

He felt directed through the corridors at the station and he sensed that an exo-pack mask was put outside the black sack and tightened in the neck. "Exo-pack, they are going to take me outside!" he thought to himself. Quite correctly, he soon heard an inner door closing behind him and then the hiss from the airlock. Then the outer door opened and he was taken out through it. He felt the burning sun in his neck as he was taken along.

Suddenly he was taken through a new door and he heard this outer door slam shut behind him, and then the hiss from an airlock again. When the inner door opened he was taken through and then brought to a halt. He heard the inner door being closed behind him, felt the exo-pack being taken off and the handcuffs loosened, and then at last the black sack was pulled off. He couldn't see anything though, the room was pitch black dark and then he heard another door slam shut.

But then suddenly the wall to his left was illuminated. He saw a computer animated but quite lifelike video presenting images from an evening in the streets through a grey, dilapidated and drab industrial area under a smoky sky, obviously at Earth. He saw large gangs running yelling through the streets, clubs and knives in hand. Then sirenes sounded and riot policemen came running, armed with cudgels, teargas discargers and shields. A voice sounded through a bullhorn: "This mob will now dissolve! Put them down!" Teargas stench rankled in Nick's nose. A pure bloodbath ensued, stones were thrown and shots were fired, screans in pain and anger sounded, and three or four protesters were lying left on the street afterwards.

The image moved indoors and settled at a couple in worn down garment, sitting at a kitchen room and sharing a meagre meal. Now it smelled of burned food. "No work today either?" said the wife. "Not much work available for psychologists any more, if you don't _know_ someone. A radio voice in the background stated: "We are expecting acid rain of power 6 tomorrow, so those with garden patches should take their opportunity to water them now while they can." The man said: "There is a rumour going that there may be some corned beef available at the store tomorrow so I'll probably be late home. I should try to get some new air filters for the ventilator and some air masks for venturing outside when we have to. Methinks that I should at least try to acquire some."

The left wall darkened off and the right wall now lightened. A tall tree under a clear sky was in the centre of the image, zooming in to show a blueskinned man coming home with some hunting game slung over his shoulders. The kids were screaming with joy and his mate assaulted him with hugs and kisses. A light-hearted voice was heard: "Don't squeeze him too hard, the sad girl needs to talk with him still!" And the hunter gave a little chuckle. A smell of fresh flowers wafted through the air in the room. The image shifted and showed an old woman telling her grand-children a fairy tale: "… but then he saw her for what she really was, his only chance for a decent life… and he understood that his choice was really very simple, if inconvenient to take…" Now it was the smell of freshly roasting meat that filled the air.

Now the right image dimmed and the wall right in front of him brightened up. To the left he saw a picture of the misery-stricken, violent-prone and polluted Earth, to the left a picture of a scenic, idyllic and natural Pandora. The images drew distant and he saw the two images like through two doors. By the side of the Earthly door lots of young and charming women flocked, some of them elegantly others scantily dressed, and some of them gave him alluring glances or enticing winks. By the Pandoran door there stood only one, Jenny, dressed in bland and worn denim trousers. A booming voice sounded: "Which door will you go towards, human being? The enticing door to misery or the bland door to a healthy, natural life? You can't go through both of them. The choice is yours to take."

Seeing again scenes he knew well from his childhood, a life he had struggled very hard to rise up from, made a very heavy impression on Nick. The other image was of such a world he had always been dreaming about living in, a world where it didn't take being a billionaire to be able to go out into the forest with a fishing rod over his neck, where he could use his ability to help people not feeling good by themselves without first considering their paying ability. He took a step to the right.

The low-toned, booming voice then called out: "Nicholas Pelham Dixon, you have now made a choice, the right one that will lead you to a sound and healthy life! But do realize that your choice today entails consequences!"

Suddenly he saw at the left wall a busty girl with precisely enough garment to not be immodest, winking seductively at him and exclaiming: "I'm all yours for tonight!" The image shifted focus and showed in the background some hoodlums sitting at a table with a banner reading "RDA", one of them saying with a rasping, sinister voice: "Now let's see if the dimwit is taking the bait!"

To the right Jenny stood in a worn denim trouser and looked exhausted. "I need you now, could you bring me the first aid kit and take care of him over there, I need some downtime." The image changed focus and showed a couple of na'vi, the one saying to the other: "Good that Nick is so able with first aid, and nobody can beat him with calming down the anxious!"

Then all of a sudden they were standing right in front of him, side by side, the seductive "femme fatale" and the weary Jenny. The booming voice asked him: "Are you ready to stick to your choice, however many seductive young women you may meet? All of them may or may not be working for RDA to con you into their net. Even if life with your wife may seem grey, bland and unchallenging to you?" "I do! I do!"

The seductive, scantily dressed seductress was seemingly advancing towards him, with eyes hungrily devouring him. The voice now said: "So what will you do if you come across a tempting female, whether human or na'vi, trying to entice you away from your rightful wife?" "I walk away from that one. And I tell Jenny." "And who else will you tell?" "I also tell the leaders of the station or the clan."

Suddenly the small room became illuminated and all the staff came in to congratulate him with his choice. Nick himself looked simply to his bone exhausted.

A couple of weeks later Jenny came to the three. "I don't precisely know what you did to him that day but it must have been very powerful. He isn't even giving glances at girls anymore but he has become a nuisance in a very new way now. Now he simply need to tell me how Angie smiled to him but how he held to his cool, how Ella _may_ have winked to him without making him sit down with her, and how Kim Chae laughed of his stupid joke without giving him a beating heart."

Max said: "He is just trying to drive home that he has changed fundamentally, to reassure you that he isn't going to fall back to his old habits ever again. It will pass. Feel happy that we have managed to make a strong impression on him."

When she had walked out, Max and Trudy turned at Norm and Max asked. "This was your work, Norm. How did you get idea to this?"

Norm answered: "I am not a personal believer but I am still arising from a catholic background. As a young student in society science I once read a little in an interesting book, 'Spiritual Exercises' by Saint Ignatius Loyola, the founder of Societas Jesu, the Jesuit order. As a non-believer I regard parts of the book as a handbook in brainwashing. That book was my main inspiration when I arranged that little show for Nick. I need to thank Jake for those photos of na'vi I needed for the na'vi animations."

Todd and Hal were also highly satisfied upon hearing that the small building they had erected for the occasion had done its trick.

Jenny really got to experience that Nick had changed his behaviour permanently. There were no more romantic escapades. Later, during the days just at the start of the 2nd Human – Na'vi War Nick (now in his new and all-blue body) was contacted by a very amorous "mata hari avatar" working for RDA. In their database he was noted as a notorious womanizer so they expected him to become a first class information source for espionage. Nick toed the line of the spy – and led her straight into the arms of some tough warriors taking well care of her.


	5. A Visit by Men of Dubious Honour

Pandora Gets a Visit by Men of (Dubious) Honour

The calendar showed 2159, i.e. four years after the eviction. Angie at the radio station had pulled the cargo manifesto and the passenger list of the ISV soon to arrive, and gave it to the triumvirate managing things at the Augustine Research Station. They for their part had made ready for delivery crates of unobtanium and two passengers. The avatar drivers Bill and Celia Gehrken had been kindly asked to return to Earth, their study fields – archaeology and paleontology – demanded lots and lots of digging and they simply couldn't accept that sometimes thirst of knowledge was far from enough reason to be allowed to dig. The solution to the dilemma was simple: Returning to Earth.

That was the departing consignment but there was a arriving consignment too. Angie read aloud for Max: "The cargo manifesto states the usual package of spare parts and provisions of all sorts. Including some more bloodlines of algae – more tasty than the previous species they have delivered us they claim – and hey, they are bringing us bantam hen!"

Max nodded and asked: "All right, and are they having some passengers on board?"

Angie looked down the manifesto sheet. "Usual stuff too. Maintenance workers, miners, soldiers, office clerks. Such guys we hardly take any interest in. If they do like we have asked them to do in that message we have sent them, those people will be kept down in hibernation and we won't see any to them. There are eight scientists on board though, six of them with avatars of their own. Those two without are to remain on board and in hibernation unless we decide otherwise. Those six with avatars can be awaken to see if they will want to do a two-year study term. Or may be they'll decide to stay on after too – depends on them."

Norm uttered: "So who are they, those scientists?"

Angie detailed: "Angus McPherson, metallurgist. Without. Melanie Foster, limnologist. Driver. Shlomo Ben Avnan, agronomist. Without. Mehsut Kökölut, linguist. Driver. Garret Bullard and Rostislav Jermolajcsik, botanists and drivers both. Kyoko Arikabano, ethnologist, driver. Rafik al-Haffin, comparative religion, driver."

Norm put the period mark: "Okay, then we have made ready for receiving them. I'll send Jake a reminder that they are coming so he can raise the customary na'vi 'welcoming party'."

When finally the Valkyrie space ferry landed, only six humans disembarked the ferry, everyone understood that it was the six of them with "driving licences". They showed to be awestruck indeed by the huge crowd of na'vi they saw eyeing them suspiciously – they of course didn't see all those who saw them but from hiding – up in the tree tops, from the roofs of the buildings etc. They were speedily brought into the main building and the "Augustine crash course" started without delay.

Norm, Max and Trudy took the podium in the auditorium of the base and Max took the first word. "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Pandora! It is exceedingly important to inform you, if you haven't been told so already at the ISV before you came down here, that you have now arrived at an independent territory where the local, indigenous na'vi population is always setting the tune. The RDA corporation was evicted from this moon four years ago, under the restrictions imposed upon us by the na'vi this is to be strictly a research facility, no mining or any commercial activity of any sort is to take place here. A handbook detailing some rules we are to follow is now handed out to you.

You will be given a mentor while you are staying here, to advice you when you approach some risky situation. Heed those advices and it will be all right for you, your mentor will be keeping a watchful eye on you!

Another reason for having a mentor is that now that all the RDA people are gone us few who still are here have to take the chores needed to keep us alive and well in this, frankly speaking, hostile environment. So you will be given tasks to take care of that need to be done here, even with our much reduced building mass under maintenance. We will try to arrange them according to your specialties and your wishes but we can't promise too much."

Trudy continued: "You may be wondering why the RDA corporation has been sent off and most of their staff too. To explain you why you are now going to watch a movie explaining you why such rules are in power. I warn you, it is heady stuff!"

And the movie was truly an awful watching. Trudy narrated while huge massacres were committed, massive destructions of land were done and venerated places where desecrated. And Trudy added at the end of the movie: "Horrible to watch as this movie is, I assure you that you haven't seen the worst stuff, only what we could show you in picture! In the end the na'vi came together under the leadership of a former avatar with military experience, Jake Sully by name, he beat the RDA goons in battle. It was a really gruesome battle with lots of blood spilled on both sides but the na'vi won and the RDA people were given the boot. I am keenly aware of the bitterness of the battle – I took part in it! Only those avatars who gave the na'vi assistance with driving them off were allowed to stay on. Those scientists of you who intend to make a study here, will be allowed to do so only due to the plea of us and with the benevolence of Jake Sully, now the most powerful of the na'vi chieftains. So you disappoint us and him at your risk!"

Norm finished: "For those of you who live in this environment and decide that it is preferable to a life at Earth, like we the original avatars do, it will be possible for you to switch into a life permanently in the avatar body for the rest of your natural life. This of course depends not only on your decision to apply for it but also on your good behaviour and obedience to rules given you. I can now answer your questions, if any."

The astonishment, baffle and confusion were evident in the eyes of the six arrivals. After some seconds a grey-haired man with a big moustache put up his hand. "Name is Mehsut Kökölut. Did I get you correctly that we will work under the control of stone age people?" "Basically that is correct, whe can negotiate with them but they'll always have the last word." answered Norm.

"I am Kyoko Arikabano. Will we be living here without the benefit of a fully functioning civilized society?" said an oriental-looking woman. "To the best of our ability this is a research station with a functioning set of amenities. But it can't be a fully working city like at Earth – we have no restaurants for fine dining, once a week we arrange a movie show but our choice of movies is limited, there is no swimming pool here, and I could continue."

A bespectacled man with a full beard spoke up. "I am called Rafik al-Haffin. I see that our study is going to be hemmed in all around but isn't it possible to trade for goods, ideas, opinions with them? Can't we try to convince them that we have practices that are superior to their? Instead of just complying with rules hemming us in?" "Don't bet on it. Among tradition-bound peoples change is a slow and gradual affair, unless forced to it. Our own Jake Sully has instituted a good many such changes and the clans have accepted it – for the one and only reason that they will likely directly or indirectly improve their chances should a conflict with the RDA corporation come again."

"I am Garret Bullard and this is my study partner Rostislav Jermolajcsik. It will be possible for us to return to Earth in a year or two?" "It sure will, but thereafter the link will be closing. Permanently. You may need to think whether you will feel like living such a life."

Finally a young woman calling herself Melanie Foster, evidently a graduate student, put up her hand. "You declare that it will be possible for us to settle here if we can adapt to feel good in a life in nature like the na'vi lead? I'll happily go for it, if I am allowed. But how will I be evaluated if I am good enough for it?" She was explained a short version of how her project would have to be finished by the deadline in two years, how she then could choose a new craft to practice afterwards, how she would learn about ways and knowledges of the jungle, at last she would leave off her human body to reside in her avatar for all her days to come.

The booklet with rules to follow was handed out and the six of them were dismissed for the evening, to get some food and some time to sleep and ponder the question whather to stay or not. The next morning al-Haffin, Kökölut and Arikabano declared that, having read the rules handbook they had been given, they had decided to abort their study programs since too many restrictions had been put in front of them. Melanie the limnologist – i.e. expert in freshwater and the life in it – eagerly accepted the rules, she was put to be the assistant of Ernest Norbert Gumm the zoologist and food provider, and Garret and Rostislav were sent to assist Ella in the greenhouse. Their official project was to be assistants to Connie Benn, an avatar-less scientist who had refused to join in the rebellion that captured Hell's Gate during the time of the Great Battle, she had consequently been sent packing. Her project was to find plants of Pandora with medical potential. She had applied for a couple of assistants to collect plants for her, to not need to rely on dr. Augustine for providing her with plant material.

Miss Benn had dutifully sent reports back to her mentors at Earth how her project was working out. What Connie didn't know was that they were read by not only academics. They were leaked to people who took interest in medical plants – their euphoric properties at least… Namely gentlemen dressed in business suit with a bulge under the left arm and Italian surnames.

So Garret Bullard and Rostislav Jermolajcsik – the _real_ scientists – had been captured on open street, assassinated and their places taken by Henry Melezzo and Albert Panaggi respectively, an RDA employee with a brother deep in gambling debt was pressed to replace the personalia with those of Melezzo and Panaggi in the RDA files. Their mission was to take the report of miss Benn, as complete as it was, and those plants she named "useful" for such purpose, back to Earth where they could be cultivated in specialized greenhouses with artificial atmosphere, to be harvested for powerful mindaltering drugs. And, if possible, to bring along some more of the same kinds too. With miss Benn out of the way it was all the simpler to lay their hands on her research results.

The governing trio at the Research Station didn't remark anything out of the ordinary at first. The two botanists behaved properly out of doors and with restraint indoors, no scandals came to pass concerning them and they did their given chores with care and zeal. But then one day Ella came in to Max, Trudy and Norm with concern written over her face.

"I remarked one thing recently, those two new botanists have a science project, to find Pandoran plants with medical uses and bring seeds or the like of them home to Earth. But I remarked something about the plants they are growing in those seed beds at the shed they have at the forest edge for this use. You would expect them to collect plants with disinfectant uses, with antibiotic or probiotic uses, with food additive uses, with insect repellent uses etc. But with one exception they are all for anaesthetic uses, and that one exception is a hormone similar.

The pattern struck me so queer that I walked to Bobbie in the pharmacy and asked her to take a look at the drugs they contain. She told me that in a human nervous system those drugs would work as very powerful narcotics – one of them is a powerful brain chemistry clutterer, producing hallucinations putting LSD into oblivion, another one is a stimulant the power of crystal meth yet simpler to hide in the body, yet another one is a sedative with all the power of heroine but none of the disadvantages of needing to be injected by syringe. And that hormone similar would lend itself exceedingly well to use as a sports dope… When she told me this, my alarm bell went off big time!"

Max got a very concerned gaze and said: "Are you sure about this? We will have to investigate this with great care. And should our suspicion be proven we'll need to inform Jake about it on the double."

They had a chat with Melanie about them and her face darkened too. "When we came out of hibernation at ISV 'Procyon' I remarked those two men, they didn't look like the men I met at the avatar course before departure from Earth. But when I took a look in the database on board I saw the same faces as before my eyes, so I just convinced myself that my memory was faulty."

Then they had a talk with janitor Todd. Would he mind opening the barrels they had made ready for transportation back to Earth? Certainly not when the leading trio of humans at Pandora asked for it. So they dug into those crates and discovered lots of frozen cell cultures of plants with narcotic properties, some with sports dope properties and even three with aphrodisiac properties – one of them was not even a plant but a water dwelling bug, the label on the lid to the cell culture was very revealing: "Pandora's spanish flea. Harmless unlike the real stuff". And not a single item for any other use…

No doubt was any more possible, shady people were active at Pandora. Now was time to bring it to the knowledge of Jake, Norm made sure to mention it when he was at one of his regular meetings with Jake. He got the whole story and he sat down to discuss it with Norm, Neytiri and Mo'at.

Jake wanted to simplify the affair: "Let me get this straight. You say that shady people have come to Pandora just to bring back to Earth some of our plants as illicit drugs for human use? And this is a problem for us here at this world?"

Neytiri commented: "You said that among others they intend to take the on'ky plant – those leaves are a powerful calming potion but we still use it only very rarely, it is very dangerous! But if this and other potions is consumed by very many and without properly careful control by skilled healers the effect will be very harmful to many human societies. (A sad smile shone up in her face.) May be human society as a whole will rot even worse because of their use of it, it may decay so bad that they can't organize expeditions to come to us and make any danger to us any more…"

Norm understood that Earth was getting distant to Jake, in emotions of every kind. Part of him simply couldn't care less about human trouble at Earth. He had problems galore as it was, demanding his attention closer to his presence, every day. And to Neytiri the prospect of eroding human kind's ability to go around in Space to raise up trouble would even have a tempting flavour to it. It was wise old Mo'at who put a stop to toying with such thinking, whether indifferent or wistful.

"Eywa's desire is for stability and harmony, wherever and however. It would be plainly wrong for us to allow balance to be rudely rocked at Earth, no matter what they have done here."

Norm added his own reasoning: "Also it would give even honest people at Earth a reason to come here to stop us assisting such bad people at Earth, they might establish a strong, STRONG military base here to stop us from doing that. Helping them or even turning a blind eye to their activity could land us in worse trouble than ever before. Furthermore, if we start to associate with criminals like those they may one day start to want to earn on na'vi people too, the corruption could turn back on ourselves. Jake, you have seen at Earth what drug abuse can do – don't you agree that we must do everything in our power to keep such a horror from appearing at Pandora?"

Jake turned his mind around. "So what are we to do further? If we are to deal with them we'll need an action plan. Any ideas?"

Norm took the word: "Actually I have one, for further elaboration at least. Let me explain.

What we want is an opportunity to pull the truth out of them, for that we have a very efficient technique which is unique to na'vi and avatars – the tsahaylu brain connection through the braid. For that to work we will have to capture them while they are outside, so that they can't run back to the station to hide there and may be even commit suicide so that we can't interrogate them.

First we offer them a bait they won't be able to resist if they are of the mind we now think they are, if they take the bait we'll get them where we want to have them, both of them. They will then be in our power and then they will face up to realities. Another advantage of catching them out in the field is that they don't have the forest smarts we have, they should be fairly simple to catch out there. These guys are most probably city slicks, inside the station they have the advantage with their street smarts."

Norm found the two impostors in their avatar bodies in a grove, looking for a fern said to be an antidote to hallusinogenics, good for returning to everyday life with a snap. A painful snap allright but still useful, they had already another one that could turn anyone into a totally disconnected schizophrenic in wild hallucinations within an hour, useful then to have something to switch the disease off too. He said: "Garret, some na'vi I met earlier today told me that there is a plant growing up in a tree with aphrodisiac properties, they even claim that it has rejuvenating properties."

"Garret" answered: "Are you talking about that epiphytic flower we saw day before yesterday? We already have something more powerful on store, ready for consignment to Earth."

Norm added petrol to the fire: "Not the be'ts'ts. This is a plant growing high up in the tallest trees, it stores its nutritients in thick roots shooting out. It may or may not be so powerful as they say, you can at least check it out. And among those nutritients there is said to be something doing 'interesting things' to a man beholding a woman. And likewise to women eyeing a man."

"Okay buddy, I can go and have a look at it" said the main purported to be Rostislav.

Norm then added: "This plant grows so high up in the tree and so far out on thin branches that you better have someone to rein you in should you start til slip. I saw a specimen from some ten meters down earlier today, up in that uninhabited hometree over there. I have no time for it, I need to go to a meeting with Max and Trudy, as one of the managers of the station I should be present at the grand meeting for all scientists, for all of them to present what they have cooking. You don't have to attend if you don't feel like, we all know that you are mostly in the business with making a summary to the research of miss Benn, the meeting is mostly for those who intend to make Pandora their home for all time. Since we know that you are probably not going to stay on after completing your project so affairs of Pandora are of less interest to you than to many others. This we all know so nobody will be missing you."

Norm walked away and knew that the trap had been well baited. They would sooner or later climb up to get that plant said to be growing up there. He walked into a thicket and found Jake and a kumpongu of warriors waiting. He told Jake about the trap being set and said: "Make the scouts look after them, if they now go up in that tree it means that they are taking the bait. I explained you what to do then Jake."

The scouts kept on the outlook and they really did climb up the tree – Jake had their gleeful report. He had had the tree mapped beforehand, he knew where the lianas they could use for escaping through backdoors were. They were watched as they climbed ever higher up, in the end they had come up to the very top at almost five hundred meters high up, far above any liana for escaping with. "Dude, it looks like Norm have sent us astray, I haven't seen any major epiphytes with big, fat roots growing up here, at any of the top branches we have been to. Is he cooking at something, or is he simply poking fun with us?"

Then suddenly they saw banshees in the air, alighting some fifty meters below them in the tree. "Rostislav" then said: "Calm down buddy, they are friendlies." Then suddenly that big avatar-looking na'vi chieftain Norm and the other "old-timers" called Jake came out of the tree trunk cavity, looking straight at them. "I have come to take you to an interogation, we have evidence to believe that you are involved in foul play. I ask you to come along without any fuss, you are so high up that there are no escape routes open to you. Should you try a lunge at me you and overcome me – I am as you know a seasoned marine – without falling down to your death during the shuffle, you will discover that there are warriors further down ready to apprehend you – I don't think you will contemplate jumping all the way down, will you? You are cornered, better don't try any useless attack."

It was clear to them now, Norm had tricked them into a trap. They went willingly along with Jake, down at the lower level they met some warriors who tied them up, when finally at ground level they were put on direhorse backs. When they arrived at New Hometree some time later they were brought down on their knees and Mo'at pricked them with her thorn. Her verdict was clear: "They are low level gangsters. Not so bad men themselves but they are working for _extremely_ dangerous people."

Jake looked them straight into their eyes, with a gaze that could have cut through stone. "All right, now start talking. Do realize that I can dig into your mind through this (he held up his queue), connecting it to yours means that you can have no secrets for me. But tell me all I will be asking for so we won't need such a tedious process, and you'll be let off my hook. And most of the questions are for me to ask, I can give you some few concise answers in the end."

The two men took an anxious look at each other.

Jake: "First of all, what are your real names?"

"Henry Melezzo and Albert Panaggi, sir."

Jake: "Ummm. Next question: Who are you REALLY working for?"

"Alfred Gillebald. Big man in Houston. Ruthless guy, has killed more singlehandedly than any hired gun I could think of. He owns the city after killing or buying out all competition."

Jake: "Good. What is the real reason for you to come here?"

"An employee with an addiction to pay for sold a confidential RDA paper to the boss. It stated that miss Benn had been collecting some plants with medical uses at Pandora and would be sending cultures of them back to Earth. And the properties of some of those plants looked REALLY interesting to him! So those scientists sent to assist her were eliminated and we took their places, an RDA clerk with a gambling debt to pay down was made to 'adapt' the database for our use. So we came here to bring back those plant cultures she had left here when she had to leave, and if possible some others of 'interesting' uses too."

Jake: "All right. Tell me if there are any more of your ilk at Augustine Research Station. And are there more of you coming in approaching ISVs?"

"Not as far as we know. This goes for both questions."

Jake: "Happy to hear that. Who is your contact guy at the Earth spaceport?"

"Vince Gherardini. Truck driver. Or Maria Wang, canteen cook, she is a member of a Triad business associate of the boss. If Vince is for some reason unavailable when we arrive then she is the one to go to."

Jake: "Fine. Last question: What is your personal stake in this?"

"A hefty load of money and promotion to managing our out-stations at the Moon and Mars. And if you will allow us one single question in return: What is to happen to us now?"

Jake: "Very simple. You are to reside in the holding cell at the Augustine Research Station until the first ISV is calling in some few months, you will then be returning to Earth in handcuffs, bringing along a report about this case for law authorities at Earth to consider."

The eyes of the men took on a shade of mortal fear. "If we arrive at Earth without any cell cultures, do you know what will happen to us? And to our families?"

Jake: "Which is why you should beg to some divinity you still venerate that proper law people at Earth will take action and apprehend those two first of all and then see where they then will be lead, and put you and all your families under some witness protection programme. So my advice to you will be to cooperate with those law people with utmost zeal! What will happen to you in other case I can only guess, and as to your families – what will be happening to them in so case will probably be much the same as what will come to be if you don't return at all."

Norm came up: "But we can offer you a small assistance. We can put in some cell cultures of completely harmless sort, they will at least keep them hoodwinked for some time, until you have been able to get your beloved ones into safety. And we will make sure that only the captain aboard the ISV, and the skipper at the space ferry, will have the documents about your case, and only the captain will read them."

And then, a few months later, so took place. They were held in the holding room at the Station until the ISV hit Pandora orbit and then lead aboard the space ferry once the skipper had been made aware of them. They were given sedative injections so that they were unconscious when they were put aboard, then the space ferry crew could be told that they needed to return for proper medical treatment at Earth. The skipper were told so too and given a letter for the captain to read and him only, detailing the whole case. And then the space ferry took off and left, only one more visit to go before time for winding down the station would be arriving.

And, though nobody knew, it was still one year until storm clouds for the approaching 2nd Human – Na'vi War would be starting to appear.


	6. A Very Different Kind of Invasion

Author's note:

This story is more than most of what I have written dialogue. It was just so very fun to put some highly unconventional Earth people in the Pandora environment, and take it from there.

A Very Different Kind of Invasion

After the banishment of the RDA colony at Pandora quite a few newcomers gave the fifteen original rebel avatars, plus Norm who had lost his avatar during the Great Battle and plus Max and Trudy who never had any of their own, ten to the number.

First to arrive, some months after the eviction, was the microbiologist Wayne Stuart Bell, he soon became Max' irreplaceable assistant in the avatar lab. He even invented a technique to fuse na'vi and human fertilized egg cells (zygotes), thus creating new avatars, without a complete bio-lab with dozens of employees and technical equipment worth dollars by the millions – allowing Max and Trudy to remain without having to return to Earth at the time of last ISV departure.

Second to arrive, about a year and a half after the eviction, was Tran Thi Dung Ly, agronomist by education and historian by leisure interest. In not so long time the graceful and industrious Vietnamese woman had found out that Owen MacGregor, the administrator clerk of the research station, shared her hobby and soon after they fell in love.

Third to arrive was Mathilda S. Cummings, astronomer by trade and in time gardener assistant to Ella van Laare in the hydroponic greenhouse too. When arriving she was grotesquely overweight and completely out of touch with any sensible way of behaving, be it among humans or na'vi, but they managed to turn her around. The day would come in the future when she would fall in heroic defence of her family and clan during the 2nd Human – Na'vi War, greatly mourned by all who knew her.

Fourth to arrive was Melanie Foster, limnologist (i.e. science of fresh water) by research specialty and given task as meat collecting assistant of hunting master Ernie Gumm. She was a modest, shy, kind, uncharistmatic and more than a little distracted young woman – hardly more than a freshman at her university. She was what sometimes might be called a "grey mouse", i.e. so extremely ordinary and unremarkable in her looks, she was so totally devoid of charm that she just for that stood out of the crowd...

The last newcomers to arrive, some four and a half years after the departure of the RDA people, gave the leaders at the Augustine Research Station some surprise…

Angie at the radio listening post had drawn the list of passengers, detailing four scientists with avatars. Martha Lopez Rojas, Bradley Fuller, Rose I. Pemberton and Lilly Four Galloping Horses, ethnologists all of them. Nothing very remarkable.

But those they saw when the door of the space ferry opened were remarkable indeed… For the four persons walking on to the tarmac that day wasn't exactly what you probably associate with dry, colourless scientists…

Martha Lopez Rojas showed to be a well grown, motherly Latina woman in a long skirt of home-woven textile, with long, unkempt hair and an artificial flower stuck into her hair at her temple. When Norm asked her to present herself she admitted that it so was – "so hard to get a real flower for hair adornment nowadays at Earth!" she said. "My name is Martha as you said but that is soooo boring, I would have preferred to be called 'Tulip' if the choice had been mine!"

Brad Fuller was a bohemian-looking guy – long hair that hadn't seen a comb for a long time either, goatee and far from snappy attire. "Me too! How 'bout calling me 'dandelion', then we have plant names all of us. Cool, whadda you say, pal?"

It was the turn of Rose Pemberton to be called up. A rough-hewn and ruddy young girl of African – American family, with an overgrown afro-mop hairdo, dressed in obvious second hand boy's garment, rose up. A pipe stuck out of her jacket pocket, and she had an aura of a weak but unmistakeable whiff of "pot" around her. "My middle name is 'Innes', I am happy with being a 'rose' – and don't you dare to joke about R.I.P. for me! When my professor did so, I needed some 'high' days after that before I could forgive him that one!"

And then it was Lilly Four Galloping Horses. The name sounded rather like from the Amerindian tribes at the prairie but she was a crew-cut blondie with lively blue eyes, dressed in ill-fitting military style garment, obviously bought from a military surplus store. Norm asked her from where she had got her surname, she didn't look very Indian. "No but I ought to have been born so! I 'fixed' my name a little when I had the opportunity, being named 'Lilly Wilson' would have been just so very boring, bland and unremarkable! I need to be someone special!"

After the end of the introductory course the day after, Norm sat down with his two other partners in the leadership at Augustine Research Station. "Some gang, I must say!" he said.

Trudy added: "Did you remark how Brad sat down with Lilly and Rose at each arm and Martha clinging to his back? They are his harem, that is what those gals are! A hippie band, that is what we have got us."

And Max added a thoughtful idea: "They declared unequivocally that they intend to stay on when the last ISV leaves. We will have our job cut out for us then, with convincing them that the ways of the Na'vi are strict, rigid and not open for give and take. We should warn Jake that these guys are one of their kinds, may be a little rough to handle! A special treatment like Mathilda got might be what they seriously need."

The omens came true. The four of them made no attempt at protest against living in close connection with and being subject to rules of nature – until it became clear what that implied… For instance: Rose became rather grumpy when Ella in the greenhouse refused to put the hemp seed Rose had smuggled along from Earth to cultivation – no "pot" for the future… Brad scoffed when he was told the Na'vi opinion on liberal love and open group marriages. Martha showed off her disgust with the tasks she was given at the station by housekeeper Ewa, she protested loudly against needing to wash floors. Lilly rolled her eyes in exasperation when hearing how little room there was for deviating from rules in general in the Na'vi way of life, whether in garment, menu, crafts or whatever. And all of them agreed that the demand for absolute and blind loyality to Na'vi clans when and if RDA should try to return was an abomination, that it was unacceptable to hide away while other fought.

In the end, after an archery training where the women happened to be absent – again, and a window had been improperly installed by Brad so that it leaked in the noxious atmosphere, the four friends convened a meeting about them – Jake, Norm, Max and Trudy.

Max opened the debate. "Those four are a problem. As for now, they are parasites on the society at Augustine – they don't hunt and gather to feed themselves, they keep trying to evade duties at the station and they perform their duties they after all do sloppy, and they are completely indifferent to lessons about the defence of us all against RDA incursions. As for now they are likely to be a heavy burden on any Na'vi clan. So we have to discuss what to do with them, the introduction course doesn't seem to have made enough impression on them, and the next arriving ISV will be the last one to depart before the time is over for Augustine."

Norm proposed: "Might it be possible for you Jake to ask Eywa for help with them like when She cracked the nut of Mathilda's resistance? Being four it will be hard to convince them with a show like I performed for Nick when we turned him around."

Jake concurred: "I'll at least have some words with Neytiri and Mo'at about it."

Trudy concluded: "I will in any case have some serious words with them. After that we'll see."

In the evening some days later Trudy drummed the four freaks together. She opened the séance with saying: "We in the leadership are dissatisfied with you. You 'play hokey' with your assigned tasks here at the station, you are not serious about learning abilities you will need to know about what it takes to live permanently here at this moon after the departure of the last ISV – you have declared that you intend to stay on, and you keep trying to tamper with rules that go for life here. There will be an end to such ways, or you will be put on the passenger list of that last ISV."

Brad protested: "We on our part are unhappy with meeting a so serious and unflinching style all around. Nothing can be done when you feel like or not at all if you do not see the point about it. There is a strict norm to all behaviour, no room for just living in the here and now and absolutely nothing else! And we are unyielding pacifists and vegetarians, there are some of our sort in the mass of RDA employees, believe it or not! We simply don't want to kill to live."

"In so case you are parasites all of you, you take more from the rest of us than you want to give back. Such types simply are unacceptable here. We all need to take our tasks seriously. Least of all is such free-loading acceptable when RDA some day in the future will be going to try another colonization of this moon. Anyone not then joining in wholeheartedly in the defence of this world will then be regarded as a traitor. And what are we going to do with traitors – you have three guesses…"

Brad became pale. "You are not seriously thinking that Earth people will make another attempt at that, are you? We at Pandora never do anything to them!"

Trudy returned him a flint hard gaze. "Oh yes, we do think they will, sooner or later. The value of unobtanium is so awesome to industrialists at Earth that they simply can't afford not to. You arrived after the half time between our rebellion and the terminal point of this research station, why do you think they didn't turn back when they were told by our broadcastings that mining had now ended, only ore available would be the stock already dug out before mining operations were ended. In other words, your very presence here is a testimony to the need at Earth for this material! So we need to join in the defence of this world all of us, the weakest link in the chain may be the one that bursts the whole defence. We are links in this defence each and every one of us, and the four of you are regarded as rather weak links as for now, Brad."

Trudy passed her gaze out over the rest of them. "It is probably time to go down for the night now. I want you, no _we_ demand you, to ponder on what I have now said over the night, so think and talk during the time before you fall asleep. Sweet dreams, all of you! See you all in the morning and we'll meet again after breakfast. I'll then ask you what your choice will be: To be unreliable slackers for the next seven months and then sent back to Earth, or to take your share in life here, in all its aspects."

That late evening was a time of four freaks in a painful soul searching. What were they to give up – their "liberal" life style or the nature they felt much better about? They held an "extended family" council. They had long ago agreed on a fixed round of speaking order so that everyone had their uninterrupted turn with the word.

Brad was the one to open the debate. "I am seriously in doubt what to decide. I frolick in this nature but I have a hearty disgust with the feeling of living in a military barrack I get from people here, whether human or na'vi."

The word went to Rose: "Much as I am revolted by having to obey their demands, I still will. I simply don't want to return to Earth, to such an impoverished slum like my hometown, Akron, Ohio, has become nowadays. It has probably become still worse in the years gone by since I left from there."

Martha carried on: "Or El Paso, Texas, in my case. So I am of the same inclination like you, Rose. And may be those rules are there for good reasons, what if Norm is right when he is insisting that those rules are an important part of what has saved this world from deteriorating like Earth? For ruining this beautiful nature is of course what we least of all want to do, are you in?"

Lilly finalized: "Don't you think that such conditions are uniquely US American either. St. Johns, Newfoundland, is certainly not a place for me any more either. And I simply refuse to believe that absolutely all those silly Na'vi rules are quite so rigid as they say they are. There must be some of them that can be bent and stretched a little without breaking the main principles. It simply takes knowing them well."

Brad concluded, and brought up another topic. "I see that I am in minority, you three are squarely in favour of staying on while I have trouble making up my mind, so I bow to the majority. But the four of us have another problem we need to think about too. They have let us understand, with no room for interpretation and misunderstanding, that our group marriage will not be accepted when we live in a blue skin permanently. Who of you will then be my one and only, and who will I have to give my good bye to? I shudder with thinking about this, I love you all three of you! What you say, are we to draw cards about it or what do you think?"

Rose had her turn with the word: "I am fond of you as much as Tulip and Lilly are, I think, and I have weaned my mind from jealousy long ago. How we decide this will probably be the same for all of us – as long as it is just probability."

Martha took over: "I just ask you to arrange this drawing of lots well before we emigrate to the Na'vi life. Otherwise there will be a race among us to capture that hair lock of yours, Brad!"

Lilly ended the topic: "Just declaring my agreement with you two. We'll rely on probability – but expect some tears from those of us not in luck!"

Brad brought up another one: "We pass on to next thing to think about. They demand us to take our share in the clan hunting expeditions. Imagine me as a hunter! I who have been a committed vegetarian since I was 14! The idea is just so damned-icky-preposterous!"

Rose inweighed: "If we have to then we have to…"

Martha tried to modify: "If we participate in the hunting and the processing of the game afterwards, who is to say that we have to eat it afterwards? Just so that our duty is completed, in other words. May be we even will be able to pull the whole Na'vi society a wee bit in a vegetarian direction, may be?"

Lilly followed up: "And we should have a few words with Max or Wayne concerning Na'vi nutrition. Let's say, we can eat what our bodies will crave of dietary elements but absolutely not an ounce more meat than that either."

Brad came with one more: "Here is the last problem I can think about here and now. What if Trudy is right when she is saying that RDA probably will one day be back with digging plans, a lot of soldiers and killing hardware to protect their vandalism? Then what are we to do should so happen? I have a horrible, icy and sinking feeling in my gut with the thought of having to kill or maim someone. But if we go into cover and try to stay neutral in some secluded hole, it will be regarded as disloyalty and Heaven help us then. Your thoughts please."

Rose concurred: "I have the same heavy feeling like you, Brad. But no army can have only warriors, someone must be medics, transporters, engineering services, communications etc. too. A possibility for us?"

Martha extended: "Also someone must keep the civil society running while the tough people fight it out. Food must be collected and prepared, plant fibers collected and woven to textiles, children must be taken care of. And you could continue."

Lilly inveighed: "Yes indeed, also it may well be that our attitude could become a little different when it is getting personal. If some hoodlums came here and attacked or killed anyone of you, there is no way of telling what I then would do."

Brad put a period mark to the discussion: "OK, so here are my proposals, protest if you like. We declare that if humans start up here at Pandora again, we'll be squarely on the Na'vi side, not their. We only ask them to put us to tasks that don't involve battlefield action. We are perfectly happy without decorations for battlefield heroism. And we accept to abide with all Na'vi rules and practices – but we will not promise not to bend them to our liking and nip them a little at the edges without actually breaking them, where it doesn't any harm. Are there protests against this from anyone? Or am I allowed to go to Norm with our acceptance of this?"

Norm received their bowing to their demands. "I hadn't really expected anything else from you, either. But I sense that we are still not finish with you. Accepting rules in theory is one thing, abiding with them in practice is something else. Your mentors will still be keeping an eye on you."

The four "special cases at Augustine" were among the bystanders when the cargo door of the last Valkyrie space ferry slammed shut for the last time, the three who were to return to Earth had left with the Valkyrie departure yesterday (or rather to their doom, as the commander at the station had secretly decided), so by now it was too late to change their minds. Their collection of Na'vi lore was complete and finish edited, all end notes were finish appended and photographs and sketches were included. Some details of present reforms had been omitted – best not to reveal all trump cards Jake had on his hand… And then the report was sent back to Earth by the radio waves. Norm hoped that his anthropological dissertation and their ethnological compilation would render new and unwelcome visits superfluous.

That evening all the staff at Augustine sat and listened to speeches by the three leaders at the research station – Max, Trudy and Norm, and by the three who were now the principal leaders of the Namana Land Federation – Jake, Neytiri and Mo'at. Details about what was now going to happen were presented. The day after the final training in the art of living at Pandora with little technology began in earnest. Hunting, faith, language and more were on the syllabus. They were all required to choose a craft for their future living – Rose went into gathering, Brad took up tool making, Martha decided for weaving and Lilly preferred story telling.

Brad kept his promise with treating the three women equally, he made a salomonic decision: none of them! He teamed up with Penny Magennis, once the seamstress and laundry manager at Augustine. Tears were shed as a matter of course, by him too, but they all understood that he tried his best at being fair and square so there were no death threats or the like. Martha and Lilly found themselves mates for themselves with time, but they all remained good friends.

But Norm was right in that troublesome situations still occurred for them. Irreverence was a principle for them, sometimes just for a childish protest against water always running downhill, not uphill when so was simply asked from it.

Martha was soon regarded as one of the best weavers of the clan, she was one day awarded a black armband marking her out as such, she was highly instrumental in seeing to that the Omatikaya clan retained its reputation as the weaving clan par excellence. Her loincloths, capes, bags and banners were always something apart, she never imitated anyone else's style – she didn't even copy her own earlier works – but sometimes she picked something so outlandish out of her loom that nobody would deign to take it into use. She more than once had irritated sighs from clanspeople, once Mo'at came to her with a wrinkled nose. "Is this a loincloth or a just a single string hanging down from a leather band?"

Rose was at the same point of time attending the lesson of gathering master Riru'niti.

"Boiled pono'tey leaves are an efficient potion against wound infection, 'disinfectant' is what I think Max called it, it will keep the wound clean and free of parasites. But don't use it if the wound is in the mouth, and don't keep it for too long on an open, bleeding wound. You will get 'funny dreams' from it."

Rose got an excitedly interested gaze in her eyes. "Not dangerous that is, just 'funny dreams'? A mild hallucinogenic, that is? Interesting!"

"You are not thinking about eating it for everydays, are you? It will in time be bad for your health!"

Rose protested: "Why do you think so?"

"Because we – and I – are starting to know you four!"

Another protest: "But have Eywa stated a strict prohibition against using it like that?"

"Well, no – but…"

Rose was soon a habitual chewer of pono'tey mixed with nectar, to sweeten the acrid taste of pono'tey – she invented the recipe herself. She often walked around in a faint confusion – somewhat like "stoned" at Earth – so it wasn't very hard to frighten Na'vi kids about not imitating her. But she learned when not to take a chew more so she was never so "gone" that anyone needed to take offence. She simply was the local weirdo female, never shunned but not quite mate material for any male either.

Lilly had meanwhile just ended a lesson in history given her by Atanzau, history master of the clan. After the story of a bravely fought conflict over a hunting ground she ended up in a heated debate with him.

"I understand that it sometimes is necessary to defend vital interests, but isn't it better to negotiate quarrels without bloodshed?"

Atanzau agreed with her. "It surely is, mostly. But it still happens that arguments simply are insufficient, it isn't usual but it does happen, among Na'vi too. Should we have given up those hunting grounds and starved just because the Angtsik – clan didn't want to listen to reason?"

"But wasn't it possible to use diplomacy, the support from others, to convince them?"

Atanzau nodded. "Oh yes, support from other clans does help in such cases and that was how they finally budged, as you can remember from the story, but if we hadn't had the mettle to defend ourselves few clans would have cared much about standing up for us either. And then in a story much closer in time, we could of course have moved to another home tree when the sawtute demanded us away. But that would only have been a temporary measure, with their insatiable appetite for grey rocks they would soon have been asking us, or some else clan, for the same once again. And again. And again… for ever. Just talking would in the end never have stopped them, taking on them with naked power was regrettable but in the ultimate end oh so necessary."

Lilly didn't say much but her gaze was full of vinegar, she simply didn't have any argument left.

In time Lilly earned a healthy respect for her story telling. She was wont to embellish her stories with a good deal of acting, like miming, animal sounds, gesticulating. She preferred humoristic fairy tales to serious sagas and became much like a clown among the story tellers. A useful teller of such stories, in her opinion. Many mothers in the clan agreed with her, she became a treasured entertainer for the small ones.

And Brad had been listening to a lecture by Norm about the present Na'vi political system. Then it was that he put his hand up.

"All this is OK, Norm. We four wish to be useful clan members, of whichever clan it might be. But is it so bloody impossible to live just a little aside form the mainstream of the clan, according to additional rules of our own? You see, we dislike abiding with rules not of our own decision, consequent and always. So having performed our duty and abstained from breaking any prohibitions, we hope we'll be allowed to pull a little apart and do like we prefer?"

Norm became serious. "It seems to me that you are the one of the four of you who takes hardest to following common Pandoran sense. Do realize that you are balancing at the edge of a sharp knife! Those going by that way will always be under clanspeople's suspicion for disloyalty and for breaking rules, so that eyes always will be upon you. And should you happen to break some rule, you can bet that the punishment meted out for you will be all the harsher for this reason."

Brad looked dejected – and then his final word of the case came from him. "It is simply too bad that there isn't a greater room for tolerance for those who prefer a little different life style."

And then Norm put down the ultimate word. "This isn't all a human versus Na'vi affair, having a degree in anthropology I know this. This intolerance you take offence from is due to the difference between a big, impersonal and indifferent society where you are totally on your own and hence anything goes, versus a small scale society where we are all dependent on each other and consequently put demands to behaviour so that we all know what we can expect from each other. Urban life doesn't mix with rural life Brad, and that is how it will always be, whether in pink or blue skin. It seems to me that you want the social cohesion that is part of rural life, while disliking the demands to behaviour that goes with this cohesion. Compare it with a jigsaw puzzle, in a big city there are many puzzles so you can always go looking for some puzzle where you will fit in, while in a small village there is only one puzzle to fit into, those who don't fit in will have to get rid of some awkward corners of the bit to become part of the image."

In his professional life Brad became a good toolmaker. His works were unmistakeable, they were full of funny or outright bizarre details. He once made a walking cane not practically usable – on question why he had made it so he simply replied: "Because it was fun to make it like this!"

So in the end they fit into the Omatikaya clan all of them. They by and by managed to work out a compromise between their individualism and the collectivism of the Na'vi society, to the sometimes grudging satisfaction of other clanspeople. The big thing they had relinquished to be accepted was their group marriage.

But then the day came when their loyalty had to go through a fire test.

Brad was working on a pole to be fashioned into a banner, he knew Martha had made ready a banner for the Uplands tribe kumpongu, her proposal had been voted by the tribal council. A nice symbol, a triangular grey shape with spots in on a pale blue background, symbolizing a mountain with caves in, was a fitting badge for the strongest clan in the tribe, the Mountaineer clan. Her proposal of a national flag for the whole Namana Land federation had been entered in the competition for the common symbol of the "state", she knew that its chances for being appointed were favourable.

Lilly had recently come back from a story telling festival, her entry in the competition – about the young hunter who had climbed a liana that had grown up to the sky during the night, straight up to the abodes of the Sky People, to get back an olo'eyktan's flute from up there – actually a "translation" of the fairy tale about "Jack and the bean stalk"… Her story had been a runner up in the competition but the prize went to the Ekanagi story teller who gave a reciting of a section of an old epic, about the hunter who went from clan to clan performing great deeds wherever he came to gain back the lost respect of his home clan for his hapless brother, Lilly was reminded about the old myth about Heracles and his great works… And Rose was sitting and preparing some ointment for aching shoulders, oh how she longed to be finish with the task so she could pick up a little of her private "dream mixture # 3"…

But then the dreaded event took place. For each and every of them the same: A boy came running, saying: "You are to report to your crafts master, at once. No protest and deadly serious! Sky people are here!"

They all dropped whatever they held in their hands and ran straight to the workshops of the masters / mistresses of their crafts. Their crafts masters and mistresses gave them speeches more or less the same for all of them. "We are now to go to a smaller tree in the forest, as for now uninhabited, appointed us by the clan leadership so that those who need some of our services will know where to go to. That is where we will settle and set up workshops for the coming time. Dispersing out in the forest will make it much harder to attack us. So go fetch your raw materials, tools and products under work, we'll bring them to our new 'away tree'. I'll show you the way."

Busy times came to the four freaks. Martha needed to weave many, many stretches of gauze for bandage, Rose had to gather lots of herbs for medicines, Lilly got to experience that parents had become far busier than before – she had to arrange play school for kids for longer days than before, and Brad had to put in another gear with making tools for all kinds of uses – stretchers for carrying, splinting rods for setting broken legs, pickaxes, hoes and other tools. All four regarded themselves lucky for not having to go into the "active service", and grudgingly accepted that this was not the best time for wasting time with making funny details on their products. In times of conflict there is little time for artistry, unless it is connected with agitation for the great cause.

So Lily was from time to time pulled in as a reteller of old stories from Earth, like reminding about the danger of invading a poor but resourceful people, remember Britain in Afghanistan 1842 – backward people but very at home in their nature, with a powerful military tradition and guided by gifted commanders... Or Russia in Caucasus during the 19th century, they managed to conquer those mountains in the end but it took more than fifty years of bloody warfare... Or Chile south of Bio-bio River, the Chilenians finally succeeded in subjugating the area in 1880 but then the colonists had been fighting the Araucanian tribes living there for more than three hundred years…

One of the freaks happened to make a direct difference as to the run of the war. Rose had been taken along to replenish the stock of medicines her assigned healer Orikite spent on wounded warriors. The two of them had been sent along with a war party of the Onati clan, playing hide and seek with an enemy patrol of one helicopter, ten soldiers and forty allied ikran riding warriors. In the evening a scout gave olo'tsamshiu eyktan Noatar the message: "They have struck camp and put out guards for the night."

Noatar looked to his assistant Bana'ä in exasperation. "Having only five hands of warriors and as many hunters of less martial experience, it is risky to attack them. Those guards are na'vi too and not easily fooled or stalked. And with a Sky people kunsip to assist them, they will be hard to overcome."

Suddenly the peacable Rose stood there. "I have an idea how to take out at least the na'vi warriors, without their support it will be simpler to corner the human soldiers afterwards."

"How?"

"Most of the enemy warriors will be sitting close together by a firepit, I presume, to have their evening meal? Then it will be possible to 'bomb' them with my little surprise for them. You see Noatar, I have the last days collected a lot of pono'tey leaves, cured them, dried them and ground them to fine powder. You have seen me doing it and probably wondered about what I have been doing. I have tried a little of this powder, I have found out that it is concentrated and very strong. We can give those warriors really a wonderful time! (hi hi hi…)"

Sergeant Rob Getz was happy when captain Davis ordered camp struck for the night, landing their Samson helicopter. They had been flying together with their Marakxali allies all day, looking for the elusive enemies but finding none. The Marakxali scouts had seen the home tree of the Onati clan, at a distance it looked abandoned but they kept their distance. The fiasco when they had come to the Swamp clan's home tree and fell into the ambush set up there – one 'copter with all crew lost – was remembered and the memory rankled. So where had the Onati hidden? Probably not far away but where?

Suddenly he saw in the weak fluorescent light from the vegetation that one of the scouts rose up from the firepit, he pointed up to the sky and called out something like: "Ikran ay'makto!" And suddenly a big bag dropped down into the firepit, the hot air from the firepit flushed the fine dust in the bag out all over. Rob and his six team mates only felt a weak, pungent and nasty smell through their exo-packs, but among the scouts the effect was immediately obvious. Some of the scouts simply sat down with an empty gaze, others walked around without direction and thought. A couple was left standing and talking in incoherent confusion, another one just giggled and laughed with a silly face expression, and there was one who simply lay on the ground crying. Only the four scouts standing guard high up in the trees were not flushed with the dust and didn't lose their minds.

Suddenly a dozen enemy warriors came out of the forest, with some gauze bound tightly around their mouths and noses like face masks, arrows flew and the captain fell to the ground, a few seconds later two of the other team members had their own arrows in their stomach. One of the warriors called out a muffled: "Surrender!" in broken English. Rob and his friends had no alternative but to do so, they couldn't get on wings soon enough to get away.

Noatar was elated, he only left four warriors to guard the "stoned" and helpless na'vi scouts from malevolent predators, and when their stupefaction waned they were to be told that they should go back to their clan and tell everyone that sawtute were the targets not them, they would in time be their friends. Eight warriors were detailed to take the four captured soldiers away. And in the end Noatar had one thing left to do, he put a bomb he had been bringing along for some opportunity into the helicopter. Soon the helicopter was done away with and the enemy patrol had been finish exterminated.

Coming back to the gatherer's "away tree", Rose was given a reception she never had imagined she ever would be given. She a committed pacifist was given homage as a war hero! She remarked many a long gaze from warriors of the clan… A few days later she was in a solemn ceremony awarded a brown tassel for her to wear on her gatherer's collecting bag, the gathering master declared that this had been given her for inventing a weapon that allowed enemies to be defeated with only a minimum of blood loss – a sort of "poison gas"…


	7. End of Augustine Research Station

**End of Augustine Research Station**

All the people at Augustine stood at the space ferry landing pad when the Valkyrie landed, and soon as landing formalities had been taken care of chatting with the space mariners got under way. Special for the occasion of this ISV call meant to be the last one, the message Angie had sent out before each ISV arrival had for this calling been amended as such:

"Notice to ISV Procyon: You are like all the preceding ISVs welcome down at Augustine Research Station, formerly Hell's Gate, to sell us spare parts and materials we can pay for with refined unobtanium ore. What is new this time round is that Your ISV will be the last one welcome down at Pandora. The reason is that Your ISV was sent out from Earth before our message of the eviction of RDA from Pandora arrived at Earth. All the coming ISV will have left from Sol Solar system after we sent the message that RDA had been banished from Pandora for ever, or they may have had a message sent to them from Earth and received it under way, before calling here. We can in other words not trust them so they will not be welcome down here. Furthermore, there is another reason for terminating the operation: We have very little ore left on stock to sell you. So when appliances and systems already from time to time malfunctioning start to really act up, it will be time for us to abandon the whole base. And it will, well before so happens, we who are going to stay here have taken our precautions. We have made ready for the event with care so You don't need to feel sorry for us.

It follows from these given facts that no further avatars will be accepted down here. Technical systems and key raw materials are the only merchandise we care to purchase, and those meant for life sustenance only. We will have to negotiate more in detail when Your representatives come down to us."

Jake kept in the background when the Valkyrie space ferry came down. His job in the event was after all to manage the na'vi warriors keeping watch over the embarkation, unloading and loading and at last debarkation processes. Skipper Beau Bascom came out to greet the negotiator of the station people, Norm, it was he who managed the human side of the affair. The skipper then said: "I also have the pleasure of introducing You to brigadier Neville Cox, who is to be head of security at the base we are about to install at the moon of Svarog up there. You can discuss what you want for you ore with him."

Trudy and Max stood at a distance and beheld the two spacefarers, the space seaman and the gruff military man. Trudy said: "That guy gives me the creepers, I could have sworn that evil, old Quaritch had come back from the dead! And that face expression of his, with clenched jaws and steely eyes, plus that tight fist, give me the impression that he is trying hard to keep his mask from falling off. I wouldn't be overly surprised if I find out that he is up to something ominous!" Max had a comment: "I get the same stony feeling in my belly when I watch him. And did you notice Trudy, the skipper makes no secret about it, that they are about to set up a base up there – that may some day be a grave threat against us!" Max and Trudy had just this small ominous premonition and were correct about that, Cox had actually gone down to Pandora to size up those he knew probably would be his opponents some day in the future…

Since many things were going to take place for the last time there were many affairs to be arranged special this time. Hal took a last turn at the stereolithographic plant, churning out parts needed to keep up the life sustaining appliances just some time more, before boarding the space ferry along with "Vyta" Iniskius and his Ewa, they on their part made up a splendid good bye party with the most exquisite food they were able to haul out of their pots and pans. But Hal had spent some time with Todd, explaining him how to produce some simple affairs, like some ammunition for firearms etc.

* * *

So the day came. Everything had been delivered, the Valkyrie was now about to leave to go up to Svarog. Everything was ready to start the complex closing process of Augustine soon as the cargo door slammed shut. The three to leave (and as brigadier Cox had secretly already decided, soon to end their lives) were greeted their good byes and given a document with Jakes best attestation for jobs well done to the utmost satisfaction of all the staff at Augustine Research Station and the Omatikaya clan. They entered the passenger cabin and took seats, the cargo door slowly closed, the engines ignited and the space ferry was airborne. Then they all walked into the main hall. Jake, Mo'at and Neytiri were already there, they were to hold a speech.

After their speeches Max walked to the avatar lab. Norm's avatar had been finish for some months already, he wouldn't need any lectures of language and customs, he was recently finish with his physical tests and could soon start the na'vi physical training course Jake had made ready. The other staff people with avatars had been lectured in and had trained for many details about the life they were to enter into, and were ready to start their tests as soon as their mentors thought them capable for it.

And there was his and Trudy's own avatars. They had studied nature and customs like the rest of them but they had never before had their own avatars… and there was a small but undeniable risk that their avatars simply wouldn't graft on to their brains. Well, in about a year's time they would finally come to find out! Trudy had stated quite explicitly that she wouldn't want to get asphyxiated by the noxious atmosphere if so was to happen, in so case she would take a pistol and turn it on her own head… Max didn't allow himself to think thoughts like that, he had given his best efforts in developing these avatars and had his own life at stake in them so he couldn't allow despair to creep in on him. Of course those two avatars would be in perfect shape!

Those who already had their own avatars got their ay'ikran one by one. Some took to their flying mount with more ease than others; Melanie, Ernie and Deke took to them like fish to water (or like birds to the air…) Finally they were allowed to lay down in their two shapes under the Tree of Spirits, and soon after rise up with just one. For some time Nick seemed to be verging on disaster, it took some time before he woke up to his new life but in the end he came up like all the rest of them. Eywa had probably had some words with him in the limbo… Only Max and Trudy were left, but of course some former avatars came to them from time to time, delivering them food, keeping the life-sustaining systems up and running to the best of their abilities etc. It was still a lonely life after all…

And then one day it was their time to give it a try! Max had geared up the avatar maturation process to the maximum speed he could dare, it still took a year or so more after the rest of them until their own, new avatars were in ready shape. So Max and Trudy laid down in their cells, and tried to think about nothing at all while Wayne and Jenny managed the terminals, sitting in their blue bodies. A colourful and cacophonic chaos erupted, they opened their eyes, looked up and saw Jake, Neytiri and Mo'at standing at the gurneys.

"We are just checking your senses now, to make sure that your dreamwalking bodies are working well. Then later today you are going to the Tree of Spirits." Neytiri said. "We go to the hallowed tree soon because Todd has said that the air scrubbers are very evidently just limping along by now, they could start malfunctioning any day, so we better transfer you to your permanent bodies as soon as possible. We dearly well want you among us, both of you!" Jake added.

Max had some new experiences he had been expecting for quite some time, first of all he knew that he from now on had to get used to the name Maksine te Kolkata Mary'ite (after his Indian home city Kolkata and his mother Mary Patel), **s**he soon found out about **her** new body – **s**he could feel **her** bust move when **s**he rose from the gurney, and some time into the physical tests nature demanded **her** to take a leak – another experience of a new kind!

Trudy on her part was overjoyed to be rid of the ugly, itching and occasionally inflamed scars from the Great Battle. That she had received something else along with her "body update" she wouldn't come to discover until some days after her "transfiguration", when an aching stomach would end in an awful bout of diarrhoea. It was discovered after some time and further bouts of diarrhoea that she couldn't digest tiz beets and the oil squeezed from them. Well, she was still happy, not being able to eat food with ingredients of tiz was a good bargain for being rid of those scars, not to speak about surviving at all without technological support in this environment!

* * *

That very evening the former avatars, plus Max and Trudy, had an audience they were unaware of. Cox had sent down at Pandora quite a few PR agents and spies roaming around, agitating for New RDA and its opportunities for na'vi clans not cooperating with Jake and his federation. One of those spies kept an eye on Augustine. Agent Rodney Gorman could report that twenty-something avatars were now leaving the base, carrying two naked female avatars on stretchers, and a naked man with a big beard and a small naked woman on another pair of stretcher, into the forest. At the forest end he saw them harness the stretchers to some direhorse teams and mount some other direhorses, and finally the whole procession trotted into the forest and vanished.

He clearly noticed a certain solemnity about the procession – total silence and slow strides with obvious gravity – but he couldn't know that he was beholding the last hours of human welcome at Pandora for some sixty years to come: The procession carrying Max and Trudy, and their avatars, to the Tree of Spirits for their appointments with Eywa. So he noted in his report that there had to be something special to this procession, hard for him to say what.

The day afterwards he came down to Augustine and found the whole place deserted. But not for long, he made a hasty retreat when he saw some avatars coming flying by ikrans down at the building complex, it was Angie who was going to take a look at recordings of the space activity during the past day, and Todd who was to switch off the air quality control and cannibalize all its parts to produce some parts for her radio lab and some few rockets and bullets more for the army Jeff was training for Jake. So there was still life at the station but as a colony of humans it was no more.


End file.
